Learning to Write: Plowing and Hoeing,Labor and Essaying

In this paper Amanda Fulford addresses the issue of student writing in the university, and explores how the increasing dominance of outcome‐driven modes of learning and assessment is changing the understanding of what it is to write, what is expected of students in their writing, and how academic writing should best be supported. The starting point is the increasing use of what are termed “technologies” of writing — “handbooks” for students that address issues of academic writing — that systematize, and smooth the work of writing in, Fulford argues, an unhelpful way. This leads to a reconsideration of what it means to write in the university, and what it is to be a student who writes. Fulford explores etymologically the concept of “writing” and suggests that it might be seen metaphorically as physical labor. Writing as physical labor is explored further through the agricultural metaphors in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and through Stanley Cavell's reading of that text. In making a distinction between writing‐as‐plowing and writing‐as‐hoeing, Fulford argues that some technologies of writing deny voice rather than facilitate it, and she concludes by offering a number of suggestions for the teaching and learning of writing in the university that emphasize the value of being lost (in one's subject and one's work) and finding one's own way out. These “lessons” are illustrated with reference to Thoreau's text Walden and to American literature and film.     

Science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge development during enactment of socioscientific curriculum materials

The purpose of this study is to provide insight into short-term professionalization of teachers regarding teaching socioscientific issues (SSI). The study aimed to capture the development of science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for SSI teaching by enacting specially designed SSI curriculum materials. The study also explores indicators of stronger and weaker development of PCK for SSI teaching. Thirty teachers from four countries (Cyprus, Israel, Norway, and Spain) used one module (30–60 min lesson) of SSI materials. The data were collected through: (a) lesson preparation form (PCK-before), (b) lesson reflection form (PCK-after), (c) lesson observation table (PCK-in-action). The data analysis was based on the PCK model of Magnusson, Krajcik, and Borko (1999). Strong development of PCK for SSI teaching includes “Strong interconnections between the PCK components,” “Understanding of students' difficulties in SSI learning,” “Suggesting appropriate instructional strategies,” and “Focusing equally on science content and SSI skills.” Our findings point to the importance of these aspects of PCK development for SSI teaching. We argue that when professional development programs and curriculum materials focus on developing these aspects, they will contribute to strong PCK development for SSI teaching. The findings regarding the development in the components of PCK for SSI provide compelling evidence that science teachers can develop aspects of their PCK for SSI with the use of a single module. Most of the teachers developed their knowledge about students' understanding of science and instructional strategies. The recognition of student difficulties made the teacher consider specific teaching strategies which are in line with the learning objectives. There is an evident link between the development of PCK in instructional strategies and students' understanding of science for SSI teaching.     

Betwixt and Between: Working Through the Aesthetic in Philosophy of Education: George F. Kneller Lecture,Conference of the American Educational Studies Association Savannah,Georgia, October 30, 2008

At a time when both philosophy of education and the arts are under threat within education, this article inquires into interdisciplinarity as one way of approaching the disciplines of philosophy of education and aesthetics. The article offers a retrospective autobiographical intellectual history and phenomenology of the author's own learning and scholarship within Higher Education in three main areas—philosophy of literature education, women's studies, and philosophy of music education, areas paralleling the three periods of her academic career. One sub-theme of this narrative about the balancing act of working in literature and music through philosophy of education is the author's ongoing resistance to professionalization or disciplinary academic control—of literature, philosophy, and music—while being a critical student of educational theory and practice in these areas—philosophy, literature and music within philosophy of education—of thus being “betwixt and between.” Two other themes comprising the article's subtext are “praxis” and “embodiment.” The double entendre of the phrase “working through” entails, first, using the arts of literature and music to practise philosophy of education; and secondly, embracing the psychological, ethical, and spiritual introspection that comes with critical engagement of the arts and its discourses. In short, the article aims to reprise some burning philosophical educational questions that have preoccupied its author over the years, questions deemed especially pertinent to the current increasingly diverse membership in the discipline of educational studies.     

ASP教学中工作情境的设计

以“基于工作过程”的教学模式,对ASP动态网页设计课程的教学进行工作情境的设计。其设计理念是以“实用”为原则,设计思路是以企业需求为导向,以项目为载体,采用“基于工作过程系统化”的项目教学法,把典型的工作任务转化为课程的学习性任务,将课程知识进行重新解构及重构,形成在教学过程中实施的4个工作情境,并对其进行重点介绍,使其能培养学生的学习能力以及提升其解决问题的能力。     

“DARING TO SAY”: STANLEY CAVELL AND DESIGNS ON LITERACY

In this essay Amanda Fulford examines the subject of inter‐cultural understanding from two perspectives: first, through considering Naoko Saito's exploration of translation and inter‐/intra‐cultural understanding, and second, through a discussion of work from the field of literacy studies, in particular the New London Group's “pedagogy of multiliteracies.” In her consideration of the different approaches taken to the challenge of multicultural and globalized societies, and the experiences of encounters with language, Fulford pursues four principal themes: learning from difference, active design of meaning, a relation with language, and transformation of the individual. She shows how Saito's use of American philosophy, in particular Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Stanley Cavell's readings of Thoreau, can play a crucial role in any reconsideration of teaching and learning in adult literacy education. Fulford further demonstrates how Thoreau's notion of the “father tongue” is central to the idea of learning from difference and to our use of language. She concludes by proposing that literacy education and research within the field of literacy studies could benefit from the kind of philosophical conversation, across the borders of subject and epistemology, that an exposure to, and consideration of, the ideas of Thoreau and Cavell on what it means to read and write can offer.     

Assessment as learning: Enhancing discourse,understanding, and achievement in innovative science curricula

An assessment‐oriented design‐based research model was applied to existing inquiry‐oriented multimedia programs in astronomy, biology, and ecology. Building on emerging situative theories of assessment, the model extends prevailing views of formative assessment for learning by embedding “discursive” formative assessment more directly into the curriculum. Three twenty‐hour curricula were designed and aligned to content standards, and three levels of assessments were developed and used to assess and enhance learning for each curriculum. These assessments included three or four informal “activity‐oriented” quizzes and discursive formative feedback rubrics supporting collective discourse, a “curriculum‐oriented” examination of individual conceptual understanding, and a “standards‐oriented” test measuring aggregated achievement of targeted standards. After two design‐research cycles, worthwhile scientific argumentation and statistically significant gains were attained for two of the three packages on the exam and test. Achievement gains were comparable to or larger than those of students in comparison classrooms. Many existing innovations could be enhanced and evaluated in this fashion; designing these strategies directly into innovations could have an even greater impact on discourse, understanding, and achievement. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 1240–1270, 2012     

Reframing primary curriculum through concepts of place

Australian curricula name “sustainability” as a key priority area with implications for preparing pre-service teachers. In the research that generated this paper, we asked: How can framing teaching through space and place inform pre-service teachers’ pedagogical thinking and practice? In new third year Bachelor of Education (primary) subject Understanding Space and Place, Australian teacher education students shared online responses to focus questions and readings framing education through place, designed and taught a unit of study “beyond the classroom” to children in their professional placements and reflected on changes in their theoretical, philosophical, and curriculum goals. Data from these forum posts were analysed through Somerville’s three “enabling place pedagogy” categories of embodiment, storylines, and cultural contact zones. Many students came to re-imagine their teaching roles and understand how a place pedagogy framework can operate to expand the possibilities of teaching and learning sustainability through creative and embodied place-making experiences in local places.     

普通高中思想政治教科书的活动设计及其教学实施

“活动型学科课程”作为普通高中思想政治课程新的课程理念与学科定位,其实现需要通过教科书中的活动设计作为学科内容的载体和实践来支撑。普通高中思想政治教科书的活动设计可以从“有什么用”“怎么使用”“谁来使用”三个角度进行设计和理解,以此构成了“活动—内容—学科核心素养”(功能维度)、“活动—情境—议题”(实践维度)、“活动—学生—教师”(主体维度)三个层面的活动设计思路。以活动设计的这三个维度为指引,推进高中思想政治课教学形态的转变,从而在“活动型学科课程”理念的教科书呈现与教学落实上确立起行动共识。     

Finding Voices in a Changing World: Standard Language Education as a Site for Developing Critical Literacies

What are the “key competencies” needed in our time? What literacy is needed to make students active participants in their societies and contributors to changing cultures? This article offers a contribution to the ongoing discussion about these questions. It takes as its point of departure the “key competencies” formulated in the OECD program Definition and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo) in response to educational challenges in a changing world, and the five “basic skills” to be developed in all school subjects from year 1 to year 13 in the Norwegian curriculum of 2006 (LK06). It argues, first, for the need to understand “basic skills” in the perspective of DeSeCo “key competencies”, with a focus, as formulated in DeSeCo, on using tools interactively, acting autonomously, and interacting in heterogeneous groups. Secondly, the aims and purposes of the school subject “Norwegian” in Norway, as formulated in LK06, are discussed in relation to the aims of the DeSeCo key competencies and the concepts of critical literacy and Bildung. Thirdly, the article offers a discussion of how standard language education can become a site for the development of key competencies and critical literacies, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas about utterances and voices and Roz Ivanic's about discoursal identities, and talking about the StLE subject as a potential public space, a stage, a resonance room, and a cultural workshop. Finally, some concluding remarks are made about the crucial role of the teacher in such a curriculum, and about the role of standard language education in relation to other school subjects.     

The Effects of Arts Integration on Long‐Term Retention of Academic Content

Previous correlational and quasi‐experimental studies of arts integration—the pedagogical practice of “teaching through the arts”—suggest its value for enhancing cognitive, academic, and social skills. This study reports the results of a small, preliminary classroom‐based experiment that tested effects of arts integration on long‐term retention of content. We designed matched arts‐integrated (AI) and conventional science units in astronomy and ecology. Four randomized groups of 5th graders in one school completed one unit in the treatment (AI) condition and the other in the control (conventional) condition. To control for teacher effects, four teachers taught the same subject to different groups in each condition. We administered curriculum‐based assessments before, immediately after, and 2 months after each unit to measure initial learning and retention. Results showed no differences in initial learning, but significantly better retention in the AI condition. Increases in retention were greatest for students at the lowest levels of reading achievement.     

RECALL AND PRINTED‐WORD RECOGNITION OF RECENTLY‐TAUGHT EMOTIONALLY CHARGED WORDS AS COMPARED TO RECENTLY‐TAUGHT NEUTRAL WORDS

This study is an experimental test of the hypothesis that “emotionally charged” words will result in greater learning as measured by tests of “recall” and “printed‐word recognition” than words that are judged to be emotionally “neutral”.

Ten third‐grade subjects were pre‐tested on “printed‐word recognition” of ten words judged by two clinical psychologists to be “emotionally charged” and similarly pre‐tested on ten words judged to be emotionally “neutral.” After equal exposure to both “neutral” and “emotionally charged” words on four successive teaching days, subjects were post‐tested for “recall” and “printed‐word recognition” five days after the last teaching session.

The results strongly indicate for both the “recall” and “printed‐word recognition” that there is a significantly greater retention of the “emotionally charged” words over the “neutral” words. Despite the fact that a significantly greater number of “neutral” words was recognized in print at the outset of the study, the final performance level for “printed‐word recognition” for both the “emotionally charged” and “neutral” words is identical.

The major implications of the results obtained in this study is that the content of reading materials and the methods for teaching them must be revised so that reading deals with events, ideas, and feelings which are emotionally significant to the child, A personally relevant reading program will not only facilitate the task of learning to read, but will capture and explore the feelings and emotions of each child, as well.     

Teaching for identities, writing between the “we” and the “I” paradigms

Circumscribed by the culture of collectivist and Confucian traditions, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education in China has defaulted to an impersonalized provision and delivery. Much of teaching and learning is to assimilate individuals into a group identity. This epistemological model can be detected in learning outcomes, e.g., preferential use of ‘we’ over ‘I’, lack of authentic self-identity in student EFL writing, etc., and is characterized by ubiquitous rote learning. In this paper, we adopt a biographical approach to the teaching of stories expressed as personal narrative as part of the research framework. This is also applied to critical curriculum and pedagogical reforms that help students to write across their extant cultural constraint, enabling them to make a conceptual leap in understanding the difference between the collective, and the individual identities, of the “we” and the “I”. Once this conceptual awareness has been achieved, the individual viewpoint can be elicited and articulated in student writing of narrative accounts. Biographical narrative accounts of personal experience are found to have a creative and self-actualizing force in forming the individual’s identity, using his/her original voice. The findings suggest that EFL writing curriculum and pedagogy in the new era can be a useful strategy to empower students and EFL teachers to teach and write between the “we” and the “I” paradigms, and expand their ontological capability and flexibility through pedagogical effect.     

Correspondence

Abstract

A profile of teacher competences is described and interrogated in the light of inherent, language‐based problematics. It is argued that such texts tend to constrain the modes and parameters within which to think about one's practice, in addition to masking possible deficiences in education systems through a pathologisation of the individual practitioner. The importance of keeping alive alternative discourses is stressed. Such discourses, it is argued, should recognise the complex idiosyncratic, contingent aspects of teaching and learning, and should include students’ reflections on their own in‐ and out‐school experiences through dialogic, autobiographical writing.     

学生话语的内涵和重要性:课程与教学的转向

新课程改革背景下,不断强调学生的主体性和参与性的重要性,因此倾听学生的话语变得越来越必要。但当前,学生话语在课程改革与课堂教学实践中处于"失语"的状态,学生的话语权严重缺失。因此,学生作为学习的主体,应该让他们积极参与到课程与教学的实践中来,促使传统的课程改革与课堂教学实践发生新的转向,最终促进学生的发展。     

成人学习特征与成人高等教育专业教学改革浅论

成人学习特征是开展成人高等教育专业教学改革的基础和条件。成人学员具有较强的学习能力、独立的人格、丰富的经验和突出的问题意识等学习特征。成人高等教育专业教学改革必须注重师生主体间性、教学内容针对性、启发式教学和学员自我导向学习。     

Beginnings of Place Value: How Preschoolers Write Three‐Digit Numbers

Place value notation is essential to mathematics learning. This study examined young children's (4‐ to 6‐year‐olds, N = 172) understanding of place value prior to explicit schooling by asking them write spoken numbers (e.g., “six hundred and forty‐two”). Children's attempts often consisted of “expansions” in which the proper digits were written in order but with 0s or other insertions marking place (e.g., “600402” or “610042”). This partial knowledge increased with age. Gender differences were also observed with older boys more likely than older girls to produce the conventional form (e.g., 642). Potential experiences contributing to expanded number writing and the observed gender differences are discussed.     

The place of surface anatomy in the medical literature and undergraduate anatomy textbooks

The aims of this review were to examine the place of surface anatomy in the medical literature, particularly the methods and approaches used in teaching surface and living anatomy and assess commonly used anatomy textbooks in regard to their surface anatomy contents. PubMed and MEDLINE databases were searched using the following keywords “surface anatomy,” “living anatomy,” “teaching surface anatomy,” “bony landmarks,” “peer examination” and “dermatomes”. The percentage of pages covering surface anatomy in each textbook was calculated as well as the number of images covering surface anatomy. Clarity, quality and adequacy of surface anatomy contents was also examined. The search identified 22 research papers addressing methods used in teaching surface anatomy, 31 papers that can help in the improvement of surface anatomy curriculum, and 12 anatomy textbooks . These teaching methods included: body painting, peer volunteer surface anatomy, use of a living anatomy model, real time ultrasound, virtual (visible) human dissector (VHD), full body digital x‐ray of cadavers (Lodox^® Statscan^® images) combined with palpating landmarks on peers and the cadaver, as well as the use of collaborative, contextual and self‐directed learning. Nineteen of these studies were published in the period from 2006 to 2013. The 31 papers covered evidence‐based and clinically‐applied surface anatomy. The percentage of surface anatomy in textbooks' contents ranged from 0 to 6.2 with an average of 3.4%. The number of medical illustrations on surface anatomy varied from 0 to 135. In conclusion, although there has been a progressive increase in publications addressing methods used in teaching surface anatomy over the last six to seven years, most anatomy textbooks do not provide students with adequate information about surface anatomy. Only three textbooks provided a solid explanation and foundation of understanding surface anatomy. Anat Sci Educ 6: 415–432. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

Talking back: teaching and learning through autobiographies in multicultural education

This research essay is intended to situate the curriculum in my multicultural education courses – of talking back through autobiographical inquiry – within real schools, a site where curriculum theorists rarely situate their work. The literature by curriculum theorists that precedes my study generally has focused on how pre-service teachers in multicultural education courses are changed (or not) as a result of course readings, discussions, and critical autobiographical reflection, all of which happen within the confines of the university classroom. My research essay extends the work of curriculum theorists on autobiography in education by focusing on the ways in which pre-service teachers use autobiographical inquiry to reflect on the impact of the context of real public schools and K-12 students on their constructions of themselves as teachers. In my extension of this work, I draw on bell hooks’ notion of “talking back” as an overarching framework in analyzing the autobiographical reflections of pre-service teachers.     

主体论视域的深度学习内涵及策略冯铁山

学生“学得怎么样”是学科“教什么”和“怎么教”的根本目的与终极关怀, 学科教学需要重视学习主体的需要、教学意义的生成。从主体论视域审视,任何学科教学均有教材作者主体、教师主体、教材编辑主体以及学生主体之分。从尊重并发挥学生的主体性出发,深度学习是学生发挥主体性过程中与作者主体、教师主体、教材编辑主体构成主体间性关系而创造性运用语言文字等符号认识自然、社会、自我获得的归真、求善、至美情意的活动。其意义的生成自然也就是在与自然、社会、自我互动中达成认知、社会参与、自我发展的建构。