A Law of Physics in the Classroom: The Case of Ohm’s Law

Difficulties in learning Ohm’s Law suggest a need to refocus it from the law for a part of the circuit to the law for the whole circuit. Such a revision may improve understanding of Ohm’s Law and its practical applications. This suggestion comes from an analysis of the history of the law’s discovery and its teaching. The historical materials this paper provides can also help teacher to improve students’ insights into the nature of science.     

What Happens to Efficiency and Equity? The Cost Implications of Developmental Education Reform

Research in Higher Education - Florida passed legislation in 2013 that exempted many students from developmental education, and required colleges to implement new instructional modalities for...     

The ‘Reality’ of School Organization

Five headteachers formed a group for the purpose of school evaluation. The approach used involved inter‐visiting and the sharing of the evaluation of each other's schools. The headteachers decided to evaluate the systems operating in their schools, evaluating each other in turn having involved the deputy in collecting staff views. All schools made changes as a result of the evaluations. The need for commitment by LEA or DES to such school evaluation was considered to be important.     

Overcoming ‘Being’ in Favour of Knowledge: The fixing effect of ‘mātauranga’

It is common to hear Māori discuss primordial states of Being, yet in colonisation those very central beliefs are forced into weaker utterances. In this process those utterances merely conform to a colonised agenda. ‘Mātauranga’, a tidy term that overwhelmingly refers to an epistemological knowing of the world, colludes nicely with its English equivalent, ‘knowledge’, to further colonise those core contemplations of Being. Its plausibility relies on an orderly regard of things in the world. In education, historical and current practices of schooling pave the way for things in the world so that they amount to mātauranga for Māori, and even the term ‘ako’ will conspire in its own way. Both Novalis and Heidegger have the ability to identify subtly colonising philosophies, and may even propose some theoretical solutions for Māori.     

The Best of Times,the Worst of Times: the ‘post’ in ‘postmodern’

As teacher educators we are in perhaps one of the most demanding of professions in terms of constant upgrading of qualifications and updating of skills and knowledge, keeping abreast of new developments in education. As we question the relevance of what has become traditional discourse to inform our practice (such as Marxism on the Left of the political spectrum and various forms of discourses of the Right) we raise serious questions as well in reference to the ideological basis for academic boundaries that have become established, that have in effect structured the way in which we have been taught, the way we have engaged in learning, and in turn, the way we engage in our own practices of teaching and learning in our dealings with subject disciples and knowledge formations. It is now that we are seriously criticizing such discourses as having ignored the socially constructed nature of what is taught, how it is taught, and not only the underpinnings of the way they are evaluated, but how they are actually valued. This paper points to some of the implications of postmodernism for practioners.     

The Anthropogenic ‘Greenhouse Effect’: Greek Prospective Primary Teachers’ Ideas About Causes, Consequences and Cures

This study explores the ideas of Greek prospective primary teachers about the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, particularly about its causes, consequences and cures. For this purpose, a survey was conducted: 265 prospective teachers completed a closed-form questionnaire. The results showed serious misconceptions in all areas (causes, consequences and cures). The most prominent misconception found by this survey is the conflation between the greenhouse effect and the ozone layer depletion, which is widely reported in the literature. There is also the notion that ??good things?? (like clean beaches) can help ameliorate the greenhouse effect, whereas ??bad things?? (like insecticides) can enhance it. One of the secondary results of the survey is that prospective teachers?? main source of information about the greenhouse effect is school. This calls for educational interventions to fight misconceptions at the source. Some suggestions are presented in this paper. The results of this study are compared with the results of two similar studies conducted in the UK and in Turkey.     

Education Reform in Hong Kong: The “Through-Road” Model and its Societal Consequences

Although Hong Kong’s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and over-emphasising rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past years, breeding outstanding business, academic and political leaders who continue to maintain Hong Kong’s competitive edge. The traditional elite schools have played a crucial role in the process. The education reform, which is still on-going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model. To accomplish this, some mechanisms need to be changed. J.P. Farrell’s concepts of equality and equity, C.W. Mills’ concept of elitism, and P. Bourdieu and J. Coleman’s concepts of cultural and social capital will be applied to analyse the consequences of the reform. The paper argues that the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating some elements of inequality and inequity in education, but that this comes at the expense of Hong Kong’s cultural and social capital and leads to the development of new forms of inequality.     

Education Reform in Hong Kong: The “Through-Road” Model and its Societal Consequences

Although Hong Kong’s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and over-emphasising rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past years, breeding outstanding business, academic and political leaders who continue to maintain Hong Kong’s competitive edge. The traditional elite schools have played a crucial role in the process. The education reform, which is still on-going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model. To accomplish this, some mechanisms need to be changed. J.P. Farrell’s concepts of equality and equity, C.W. Mills’ concept of elitism, and P. Bourdieu and J. Coleman’s concepts of cultural and social capital will be applied to analyse the consequences of the reform. The paper argues that the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating some elements of inequality and inequity in education, but that this comes at the expense of Hong Kong’s cultural and social capital and leads to the development of new forms of inequality.     

‘Being in the World’: The event of learning

This paper employs an eclectic mix of paradigms in order to discuss constituting characteristics of young children's learning experiences. Drawing upon a phenomenological perspective it examines learning as a form of ‘Being’ and as the result of learners’ engagement with the world in their own, unique, intentional manners. The learners’ intentions towards their world are expressed in everyday activity and participation. A social constructivist perspective is thus employed to present learning as situated in meaningful socio‐cultural contexts of the everyday, lived world and as a form of participation in those settings. These characteristics of learning are brought together into a holistic, synthesised model, a Gestalt of learning. The proposed synthesis has relevance for and is applicable to educational contexts as a means of making sense of children's learning experiences and of promoting and facilitating them.     

The Real Story Behind The Theory of Relativity

Here at last is the truth about the development of what iscalled the Theory of Relativity.This account of Einstein's lifeand the events leading up to the formulation of his theory waswritten only after doing an exhaustive study of the man whose     

PRACTICAL INSIGHTS The power of ‘already’

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The ACB of ELT…‘SLA’

SLA stands for Second Language Acquisition. Researchers working in this area are primarily concerned with understanding how people acquire a second language, both in terms of the processes they go through and the learning outcomes.     

The ‘self‐interested’ woman academic: a consideration of Beck's model of the ‘individualised individual’

The work of Ulrich Beck, particularly his concept of the ‘individualised individual’, is increasingly cited by educational social scientists. As yet, there have been few empirical investigations that consider how applicable and relevant is the notion of the ‘individualised individual’ in understanding how people make sense of their lives (for an exception, see Reay, 2003 Reay, D. (2003). A risky business? Mature working‐class women students and access to higher education. Gender and Education, 15(3): 301–317. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]). This paper considers Beck's assertion that social class is of increasingly less importance as society shifts from a first to a second modernity. Interviews were carried out into the career experiences of a group of academic women working in higher education institutions. The conclusions reached suggest that if Beck's theory is to be useful in understanding contemporary actors in contemporary societies then the critical concepts he introduces need to be articulated by researchers in more complex ways.