ANNOUNCEMENT: New “Research and Practice” Section in the Journal

Research in Higher Education -     

On Defining “Wisdom”: Baltes,Ardelt, Ryan,and Whitehead

Wisdom has been a topic of religion and philosophy since the dawning of human civilization. But only during the last two or three decades wisdom has become a topic of empirical research in developmental psychology, adult and old age education, as well as in management and leadership studies. The aim of this paper is to elaborate a new definition of “wisdom,” in order to provide a more adequate foundation for empirical wisdom research. To reach this goal, two empirical wisdom theories (Baltes and Ardelt) and two philosophical wisdom approaches (Ryan and Whitehead) are presented, discussed, compared, and synthesized. The results show that despite the fact that Baltes’ definition of “wisdom” is somewhat wider than Ardelt’s, their approaches have many aspects in common. Additionally, also Whitehead’s ideas on wisdom are quite similar to Baltes’ core criteria concerning wisdom-related knowledge, but Whitehead mentions two additional aspects which go beyond Baltes’ approach. Further, according to Ryan, wise persons must have very few unjustified beliefs; this necessary condition for a wise person is neither mentioned by Baltes, nor by Ardelt or Whitehead. Based on the ideas of these four approaches, a new definition of “wisdom” is presented, in which wisdom is relativised to time indices and moral systems. This definition consists of a cognitive, an ethical, and a reflective component. Further it is shown that Fischer’s and Dawson’s Lectical Assessment System is a major candidate for measuring wisdom on the basis of our new definition.     

“On the Nature of Institutional Research” Revisited: Plus ça Change… ?

In reconsidering the three “tiers of institutional intelligence” needed for effective institutional research practice he first offered 20 years ago (Terenzini in Res Higher Educ 34:1–10, 1993), Terenzini suggests that those forms of intelligence retain their overall relevance today, but that they also require some important redefinition. The major changes deal with adapting to the dramatic transformations in information technologies and analytical power; greater awareness and responsiveness to the changing state, national, and international educational and political scenes; the need for more extensive familiarity with the research literature, and subtler and more savvy political skills.     

“Attraction,Attention, and Desire”: Consumer Culture as Pedagogical Paradigm in Museums in the United States, 1900-1930

Urged on by a young generation of reform-minded professionals, museums in the United States adopted the premises and practices of consumer culture in the early twentieth century. This article argues that this turn towards consumer culture resulted from a new institutional commitment to public education and a radical re-conception of visual pedagogy. In doing so, the article opens dialogue between two bodies of scholarship that rarely inform one another: the history of education and the history of early twentieth-century consumer culture. Focusing on natural history museums, the article explores how and why museum reformers gradually came to accept the psychological principles underlying advertising and salesmanship and to believe these principles could be employed on behalf of education. It chronicles how museum staff increasingly emphasised visual pleasure as a pedagogical tool, and constructed displays to arouse attention, attraction and desire for knowledge. Finally, it describes how these new pedagogical ventures did not always have the effect that reformers anticipated.     

Preparing the “New” Biologist of the Future: Student Research at the Interface of Mathematics and Biology

We describe a unique Research Experience for Undergraduates and Research Experience for Veterinary students summer program at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis on the campus of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The program focused on interdisciplinary research at the interface of biology and mathematics. Participants were selected to work on projects with a biology mentor and a mathematics mentor in an environment that promoted collaboration outside of the students'' respective disciplines. There were four research projects with teams of four participants and two faculty mentors. The participants consisted of a mixture of 10 undergraduates in biology- and mathematics-related disciplines, four veterinary students, and two high-school teachers. The activities included lectures on both the biological and mathematical backgrounds of the projects, tutorials for software, and sessions on ethics, graduate school, and possible career paths for individuals interested in biology and mathematics. The program was designed to give students the ability to actively participate in the scientific research process by working on a project, writing up their results in a final report, and presenting their work orally. We report on the results of our evaluation surveys of the participants.     

On the muckiness of science,ethics, and preservice teacher education: contemplating the (im)possibilities of a ‘right’-eous stance

In this article, we wade through the muckiness of ethics in science, teaching, and teacher education, in the form of a generative metalogue. Grounded in Sara’s experience with preservice teachers learning about ethics through a case study of a high school dissection, we contend with what it means to shift away from colonial and masculinist binaries that produce particular moralistic orientations as 'wrong' or 'right.' We contemplate what it means to attempt to teach-think-feel with ethics as 'mucky,' without diminishing attention to relations of power in science and ethics. Through our own thinking–feeling process and grappling with the ways that science and education can be simultaneously oppressive and liberating in an unfinished, complex, and interdependent world (of difference), we propose: Thinking with muckiness is ethical praxis; drawing from our own embodied resources for ethical feelingthinkingdoing is central to this praxis; and (place-conscious) powered relations in science and education must be made explicit.

     

“We're Trying to Take Action”: Transformative Agency,Role Re-mediation,and the Complexities of Youth Participatory Action Research

This article seeks to illuminate the complexity of youth participatory action research (YPAR) through the use of two concepts: (1) transformative agency, a collective initiative to address conflicts and contradictions in activity systems, and (2) role re-mediation, the disruption of power relations. We demonstrate that these concepts, in comparison to the concept of civic participation, allow for an expanded consideration of the cross-contextual processes that are involved in collective mobilization to enact justice. To explore this area, we examine an afterschool YPAR program involving the adult authors and youth of color with intersectional identities—including emergent bilinguals and youth perceived as struggling academically. We illustrate three avenues of transformative agency and role re-mediation within the YPAR program: (1) engagement with critical fiction and non-fiction texts that expose power relations; (2) interactions between individuals within and beyond the YPAR space; and (3) production and dissemination of knowledge. Through this exploration, we illustrate how the lenses of transformative agency and role re-mediation can provide new understandings of change-oriented action in YPAR.     

Language teachers: Research and studies in language(s) education,teaching, and learning in Teaching and Teacher Education, 1985–2012

The article reviews twelve of 79 articles focusing on language teachers, language(s) teacher education, teaching, and learning published in Teaching and Teacher Education since 1985. The twelve articles, divided into three sections, include narrative inquiry and identity, teacher education topics, and contexts. The articles provide local and contextual expressions that taken together begin to compose a landscape or sphere where various language education researchers share wonderments and puzzlements, queries and inquiries, and insights and understandings. The TATE articles provide puzzle pieces lending evidence to a plausible postdisciplinarity sphere of growing and developing research and studies in language(s) teacher education.     

On the Relation Between Teachers’ (In)formal Learning and Innovative Working Behavior: the Mediating Role of Employability

Teachers’ innovative work behavior and professional development is receiving more attention lately. More precisely, it is argued that teachers’ formal and informal learning is crucial to anticipate and deal with continuous changes and innovations in technology and didactics, for example. Therefore, this study researches the teachers’ innovative work behavior by studying relations between (in)formal learning activities, employability (i.e. five competences: occupational expertise, anticipation and optimization, personal flexibility, corporate sense and balance) and innovative working behavior (IWB, i.e. ideas generation, promotion and realization). Furthermore, the mediating role of employability between learning and innovative working behavior is studied, too. Based on path analysis conducted on questionnaire data from 301 primary and secondary school teachers from the French-speaking community of Belgium, findings conclude that employability competences are related to both formal and informal learning, but the relationship between informal learning and employability is stronger. Next, making a distinction between the frequency and use of social informal learning is relevant given the differentiated role the different components play. Feedback use in particular seems to play an important role in teachers’ employability and IWB. Finally, it can be concluded that employability partially mediates the relation between the undertaking of (in)formal learning activities and dimensions of innovative working behavior. Results imply that schools should pay more attention to supporting teachers’ informal learning since it’s crucial for improving their ability to innovate and to be able to deal with changes in the dynamic world of education.     

Implementing “Big Ideas” to Advance the Teaching and Learning of Science,Technology, Engineering,and Mathematics (STEM)

Although education experts are increasingly advocating the incorporation of integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum units to address limitations in much current STEM teaching and learning, a review of the literature reveals that more often than not such curriculum units are not mediating the construction of in-depth STEM knowledge. In this paper, we conjecture that the challenge of generating integrated STEM curriculum units that overcome this limitation and facilitate in-depth learning of and about STEM can be met by the use of three types of big ideas: within-discipline big ideas that have application in other STEM disciplines, cross-discipline big ideas, and encompassing big ideas. We provide a six-component framework (together with an example of the framework in action) that can be used to scaffold pre- and in-service teachers’ development of integrated STEM curriculum units based around these types of big ideas. The paper concludes by discussing possible directions for future research and development in this field.     

Research on mathematics learning at the “Center of Individual Development and Adaptive Education” (IDeA)—an introduction

In 2008, the research center “Individual Development and Adaptive Education” was constituted by the Goethe University, the German Institute for International Educational Research, and the Sigmund Freud Institute, all located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany (http://www.idea-frankfurt.eu). The research of the center focuses on the development of children in preschool, kindergarten, and primary school age by including and combining cognitive, neuro-cognitive and socio-emotional factors. The Special Issue “Early Years” reports about the research activities concerning mathematics learning in the early years.     

“Trickle-down” reform: Hispanics,higher education,and the excellence movement

The current excellence-in-education movement has dealt a heavy blow to the advancement of Hispanics seeking degrees in higher education. Attempting to reform education while ignoring the concerns of minorities who traditionally have not fared well in schools strongly suggests that reformers expect the benefits of reform to trickle down to minorities after first benefiting mainstream students. The result is that reform measures such as the raising of college admission standards, the restructuring of financial aid, curriculum changes, and competency tests for teachers have added additional hurdles for Hispanic students, placing greater restrictions on their access to higher education. Reconceptualizing the definition ofexcellence to include not only higher standards, but educational equity, is a demographic imperative as the nation moves to a minority majority.