Education for radio

Aristotle discussed various forms of rationality in the Organon and other works. Aristotle held that in making judgments, the soul used five means— intelligence, episteme (scientific knowledge), sophia (theoretical wisdom), techne (art), and phronesis (practical wisdom). The nature of rhetoric as a techne employed in persuasion and grounded in probabilities distinguishes it from discourse in natural science, metaphysics, and philosophy. Aristotle's comparative study of the reasoning used by each of these means enables us to recognize rhetoric's uniqueness.     

The Joint Accomplishment of Identity

Identity has become a central concept in the analysis of learning from social perspectives. In this article, we draw on a situative perspective to conceptualize identity as a joint accomplishment between individuals and their interactions with norms, practices, cultural tools, relationships, and institutional and cultural contexts. Employing vignettes from our prior research, we examine the joint accomplishment of identity with respect to different levels of activity, including how identity develops in relation to the practices of a particular activity, how identity shifts over time across activities, and how more enduring communities and practices frame the ways that identity develops within and across activities. We illustrate, in particular, how a situative perspective on identity enables researchers to capture the dynamic interplay of individuals and resources, thus accounting for aspects of structure and agency in all social interactions.     

Hegemonic speech genres of classrooms and their importance for RE learning

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how potential learning is related to hegemonic speech genres. This we do through examples from two religious education (RE) classrooms, one Norwegian and one Swedish. By presenting important dimensions of speech genres used in RE classrooms, the article also contributes to developing theory. The theoretical perspectives in use are drawn from sociocultural theory. The Bakhtinian concept of speech genre is the central one, but positions, positioning and discursive practice and its institutional framing are highlighted too. Methodologically the article starts with the theoretical perspectives and uses data from a case study to illustrate the importance of these perspectives in understanding constructions of potential learning in RE classrooms. Besides demonstrating the importance of these theoretical perspectives, the article shows how the potential learning of the RE classroom is related to the teachers’ positioning along a pupil–content axis and to the character of the speech genres where two dimensions seem of special importance: how religion is valued (respectfully – mockingly) and how the borders of religions and beliefs are to be understood (fixed – open).     

Yours,Mine or Ours: What Counts as Innovation?

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that research and development organizations (R&DOs) have particular perspectives on what counts as an innovation whereas the potential adopting users usually have quite different often diverse perspectives. If these ‘worldviews’ do not overlap or speak to each other, then what R&DOs consider innovative might constitute a waste of time and resources from the potential users' perspective, thereby negating the entire adoption process. Using complex systems theory and storytelling concepts, I argue that innovation emerges from the confluence of diverse stories. If, however, the dominant perspectives informing these stories originate from within an R&DO (in-house storytelling), then innovation will occur in a vacuum. Stories from potential adoption contexts external to an R&DO (out-of-house storytelling) need to be integrated into the innovation process at all stages whereupon out-of-house stories are actively sought out and brought into the R&DO (inward flow) and in-house stories are actively shared within relevant external contexts (outward flow). Juxtaposing in-house and out-of-house stories provides a co-evolving emergent pathway for innovation. The R&DO focuses its energy on needs/issues highlighted in out-of-house stories, thereby co-constructing the context for innovation and potential adoption. Those providing out-of-house stories become primed for innovation through an understanding of in-house stories, thereby co-constructing the adoption context. This paper integrates complex systems and storytelling concepts to provide a unique perspective on the innovation process; a process that explicitly harnesses the complex interactive dynamics between R&DOs and adopter contexts.     

In search of phronesis: recognizing practical wisdom in the Recognition (Assessment) of Prior Learning

This article argues that greater understanding of the Aristotelian concept of phronesis or practical wisdom would make an important contribution to the conceptualization and implementation of Recognition (Assessment) of Prior Learning (RPL/APL) in formal education contexts. However, there is a need to identify phronesis empirically so that RPL assessors can identify it and RPL candidates can articulate it. Extracts from the qualitative data of two separate research projects are presented to show examples of phronesis. These extracts also show the difficulties associated with its articulation and identification. It is argued that even if phronesis cannot be accredited for RPL purposes, it should be taught and discussed in the curricula of adult education and RPL portfolio development courses to show the importance of this form of knowledge and reasoning and the different forms it might assume in formal education and life contexts.     

We have been living with this pain: enquiry-based language learning in Iranian higher education

This article explores an understanding of learning as authentic enquiry and language as a social practice of meaning construction as the theoretical perspectives underlying an educational initiation beyond mainstream tertiary language education. With a general ethnographic approach and relying on multiple data sources, we investigate critical practices of teaching medical English in an Iranian university and illustrate a contextualized instance of enquiry-based language learning that embodies enquiry and discovery in two senses: students’ research and learning about the content for oneself, and moving away from spoon-feeding views of academic language education to experience language in real social contexts. On this basis, we argue for stepping beyond predetermined content-based approaches to university language teaching and call for living the language that is being learned, which involves enquiring, experiencing, discovering, challenging, and owning it.     

In Their Own Words: Teachers' Reflections on Adaptability

Current research explores adaptability by gathering teachers' reflections on their adaptations. However, the field knows little of what the term adaptability means to teachers who currently teach in today's educational context. In this article, adaptability is discussed from the perspectives of 3 practicing classroom educators, teaching in various contexts (geographic region and grade level). Teachers' voices of adaptability are examined and a definition of adaptability is discussed. Obstacles are presented in these teachers' efforts to adapt their instruction in their respective contexts. Teachers then discussed the ways in which they navigated these obstacles to modify their instruction to fit a variety of learners and experiences despite these constraints.     

“Connect,” Log It,Track It,Go! Techne—Not Technology—and Embodiment to Achieve Phronesis in Exercise Promotion

Given the rise in obesity and the positive exercise effects in curbing obesity levels, exercise promoters are expected to use technological applications—social media and fitness applications—in their exercise motivational programs. The purpose of this article is to critique the use of social media and fitness apps as both ineffective and potentially harmful. An alternative approach is proposed where phronesis (practical wisdom) in exercise participation can be achieved via physical and cognitive mastery of the action for its own sake (real techne-art, embodiment). Emphasizing exercise outcomes (e.g., energy expenditure) captured by external devices distracts from embodied and phronetic action. Drawing on the philosophies of phronesis, techne, and embodiment, exercise promoters should emphasize embodied exercise experiences via mastery of action, social interactions, and connectedness to nature. They should target real action in real communities, and not emotionless and meaningless online forums about how to become the ultimate virtual fitness buff.     

Critical Factors in On‐Campus Clinical Experiences: Perceptions of Preservice Teachers

In this paper, I present the findings of a self‐study into my teaching practices as a sociology‐of‐education lecturer working in the pre‐service teacher education programme of a regional university in New South Wales, Australia. The principal data source is a logbook of the teaching practices which characterised several tutorial classes taught in 2007. To understand these practices, the paper draws upon Aristotle's concepts of techne and praxis, and Bourdieu's understanding of practices as socially constructed and contested. The paper situates tensions between more technicist and praxis‐oriented teaching approaches to pre‐service teacher education, within the teacher education and university contexts in which these classes were undertaken. In doing so, the paper reveals tensions between assessment‐driven and more authentic teaching practices, and more student‐ and teacher‐centred teaching practices. The paper also shows how accountability pressures within tertiary settings have led to a more instrumental approach to tertiary teaching. I conclude that there is a need for greater attention to the conditions of work which influence teacher educators' practices, rather than fetishising individualistic instantiations of such practices.     

‘So where do I go from here?’ College mentors' continuing professional development

This paper explores how vocational, occupational, practical or indeed experiential education can assist in the development of phronesis or practical wisdom within the responsible learner. It proposes that formalized, institutionalized education might inhibit the development of phronesis in the quest for knowledge. We propose that should we desire a society which flourishes as a community based on relatedness not transaction and on transcendence not immanence, then we will need to restore the centrality of the workplace as a site for democratic learning rather than instrumentality. We explore this proposal through the lens of Heidegger's development of the notion of techne from the being of a craftsman to technical skills.     

Powerful knowledge,transformations and Didaktik/curriculum thinking

From the vantage point of knowledge transformations entailed in curriculum making, this article seeks to contribute to a rethinking of the concept of powerful knowledge. It makes a case for linking the teaching of content knowledge to the development of human powers (understanding, ways of thinking, capabilities and dispositions) by way of knowledge transformations. The article starts by examining three perspectives or contributions to knowledge transformations: (1) Bernstein’s recontextualisation; (2) Chevallard’s didactic transposition; and (3) Gericke et al.’s transformations. This is followed by a discussion of what transformations entail from the perspective of Bildung-centred Didaktik, and what transformations mean in today’s context if education is centrally concerned with the development of human powers. It concludes by questioning the conflation of powerful knowledge with disciplinary knowledge.     

Identity Education: A Conceptual Framework for Educational Researchers and Practitioners

This article presents the concept of identity education (IdEd) referring to the purposeful involvement of educators with students’ identity-related processes or contents. We discuss why educators may consider identity important to the realization of educational goals and choose to target aspects of students’ identity in their pedagogical practice. We offer a broad theoretical framework that organizes and focuses the extensive yet scattered discourse on identity and education. Because IdEd is a concept that accommodates diverse educational perspectives and concerns, we outline several parameters that can assist educators in making sense of this diversity and provide a conceptual basis for pedagogical and curricular decision making. These parameters also provide researchers from different scholarly traditions a common framework for constructive dialogue and can serve as a basis for generating focused and productive research directions.     

Theory and Practice: the Politics of Philosophical Character

This essay explores the thorny issue of theory and practice, partly in response to the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (37.2, 2003) but more especially as a way of offering a critique of Joseph Dunne's book, Back to the Rough Ground (1993). It argues that Dunne's notion of phronetic techne risks the reduction of philosophy to the merely instrumental, and, in turn, that this approach threatens the significance of philosophical character.     

Role of transnational and national education policies in realisation of critical thinking: the cases of Sweden and Kosovo

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the push from the European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development for competence-based curricula, this article problematises the complexity of developing twenty-first century skills, such as critical thinking, by addressing the role transnational and national policy contexts play in realising critical thinking in the national contexts of Sweden and Kosovo. The article distinguishes between policy-critical thinking and civic-critical thinking. Relying on analyses of curriculum and policy documents, it is concluded that while in the Swedish context critical thinking competence (or ability) seems to be much more implicit than explicit, in Kosovo, the national curriculum makes explicit references to thinking competences as a form of policy-critical thinking and civic competencies as a form of civic-critical thinking. Thus, students in both contexts have opportunities to develop critical thinking skills. Furthermore, Sweden emerges as a divergent case and Kosovo as a convergent case with regard to transnational policy flow research paradigms.     

Teacher agency in the Canadian context: linking the how and the what

Even though there is no common conceptual basis guiding teacher education in Canada, over the past two decades teacher educators both in Canada and around the world have called for teacher candidates to become agents of change. While researchers across Canada strive to demonstrate how to prepare pre- and in-service teachers to be agents of change, few scholars have examined in detail what teacher agency might mean in the Canadian context. This paper reviews the conceptualisation of agency from five theoretical perspectives (psychology, sociology, critical theory, historical studies, and post-structuralism) and examines how empirical studies in the Canadian contexts align with these perspectives. This paper makes explicit the connections between the how and the what of agency, and as such informs current approaches to preparing pre- and in-service teachers and their potential role as agents of change, and maps out how the notion of agency is taken up in a particular jurisdiction.     

Empire and Children’s Literature: Changing Patterns of Cross-Cultural Perspective

Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Foreign Children,” Rudyard Kipling’s poem “We and They,” and Frances Temple’s youth novel The Beduins’ Gazelle are the texts submitted to detailed analysis in this article, which examines cross-cultural perspectives in relation to imperial and post-imperial social contexts. Stevenson is shown to portray the basic structure of an imperial cross-cultural perspective, which Kipling problematizes and calls into question. Analysis of Temple reveals her awareness of the problems and limitations that inhere in an imperial perspective and shows that her work presents innovative, contemporary approaches to the representation of cross-cultural perspectives.     

Assessment as learning: blurring the boundaries of assessment and learning for theory,policy and practice

This paper explores assessment and learning in a way that blurs their boundaries. The notion of assessment as learning (AaL) is offered as an aspect of formative assessment (assessment for learning). It considers how pupils self-regulate their own learning, and in so doing make complex decisions about how they use feedback and engage with the learning priorities of the classroom. Discussion is framed from a sociocultural stance, yet challenges some of the perspectives that have widely become accepted. It offers three new views to help explore the concept of AaL: understanding feedback; understanding the learning gap; and exploring vocabularies of assessment. Pragmatically, the ideas examined suggest that teachers may need to consider less about focused and directive feedback, but more about how learners interpret and understand feedback from their self-regulatory and self-productive identities and how vocabularies for assessment can be more collaboratively shared in learning contexts.     

Educational testing as an accountability measure: drawing on twentieth-century Danish history of education experiences

This article reveals perspectives based on experiences from twentieth-century Danish educational history by outlining contemporary, test-based accountability regime characteristics and their implications for education policy. The article introduces one such characteristic, followed by an empirical analysis of the origins and impacts of test-based accountability measures applying both top-down and bottom-up perspectives.

These historical perspectives offer the opportunity to gain a fuller understanding of this contemporary accountability concept and its potential, appeal and implications for continued use in contemporary educational settings. Accountability measures and practices serve as a way to govern schools; by analysing the history of accountability as the concept has been practised in the education sphere, the article will discuss both pros and cons of such a methodology, particularly as it relates to contemporary education governance.     

Comparative glocal perspectives on European teacher education

This article reports the findings of a PhD study, which offers comparative perspectives on teacher education in a period of reforms, inquiring into stakeholders’ perceptions in English, French, Italian and Spanish contexts as case studies. The interaction of needs and constraints in European initial teacher education within higher education reforms, and the mediation between contrasting influences and diverse education cultures, are viewed as global phenomena: teacher education practices in different countries can be described as ‘translations’ of European policies, with innovative potential in glocal developments. This article explores some issues of the European dimension of teacher education, reporting the qualitative findings of the study, underpinned by a theoretical framework encompassing globalisation and social ecological studies. In the four case study contexts, the focus is on secondary teacher education; when a subject perspective is required, it concerns the area of modern languages, considering their transversal role in European education policies. Findings from the national case studies come from a limited empirical sample, but can be of interest in showing emerging tensions and trends.