Introduction to the Special Issue on Interdisciplinary Conversations (Part 2): The Impact of Interdisciplinary Conversations on Courses

Abstract

The two parts in this special issue address interdisciplinary conversations involving mathematics courses in the first 2 years of undergraduate work. The special issue was inspired by work funded by the National Science Foundation under a grant titled “SUMMIT-P.” The special issue includes papers written about projects both from SUMMIT-P and from outside of SUMMIT-P. Part II focuses on what the results of interdisciplinary collaboration look like in the classroom.     

Connecting Classrooms in Pre-service Education: Conversations for learning

Many students enter pre-service education programmes believing that their practical learning experiences will occur in schools and that their theoretical learning experiences will occur in the university or college setting. Research shows that frequently student teachers retain this perception throughout their programmes without acknowledging the interplay of theory and practice in their learning. Through the use of communication technologies, student teachers participating in the Bachelor of Teaching degree at the University of Otago are encouraged to make connections between the activities in their university-based classes and those of classrooms in primary schools. Frequent dialogue through fax, audio-conference and e-mail between student teachers based in the university and children and their teachers in classrooms enables them to access the thinking of children and teachers, and provides additional opportunities to theorise their practice and practise their theory. Student teachers are provided with a range of opportunities to explore the potential of information technologies in education while interacting with children and teachers beyond the traditional practicum experience. The use of technology to connect student teachers to learners in classrooms challenges the conventional teacher education curriculum.     

Reconsidering Happiness in the Context of Social Justice Education

That happiness leads to lack of harm and suffering, representing both a good and a means to good, is promoted, for example, by educational philosophers such as Nel Noddings. But happiness should not be seen as an unproblematic goal, for education or otherwise. In this article, we critically investigate the importance of happiness in the educational context. More specifically, we emphasize the necessity of problematizing happiness as an emotional practice in social justice education. In order to contextualize our analysis, we enumerate two theoretical perspectives that endorse happiness in education. These are the educational philosophy of Noddings and the paradigm of positive psychology. After exploring how happiness is promoted theoretically and practically, we elaborate a critical perspective on happiness in relation to education. We use the work of Sara Ahmed, among others, to illustrate some ways in which happiness can function to serve unjust relations in education. We thus explore happiness as an intersubjective affect, as opposed to considering it as an intrasubjective feeling. We argue that educators who want to foster social justice in education need to consider the positive and the negative consequences of encouraging happiness in education. Fostering happiness can be progressive and empowering, but it can also be regressive and unjust.     

Utilizing Student Socio-coordinated Mimicry: Complex Movement Conversations in Physical Education

This article explores Complexity Theory and applications of nonlinear dynamics in physical education (PE). The authors of this article discuss Complexity Theory and its applications to students and student learning. Additionally, there will be discussion of how the networking learning process associated with socio-coordinated mimicry creates a “movement conversation” between learners rooted in the relational complexity of students within a PE lesson. Finally, the authors discuss research opportunities within PE, allowing for a close collaboration between pedagogical researchers and biomechanists to examine the emergent qualities within the “movement conversations” between students. Overall, this article seeks to illustrate the possibilities of utilizing Complexity Theory within PE pedagogy and research.     

Teaching,Teacher Education,and the Humanities: Reconsidering Education as a Geisteswissenschaft

In this essay Gert Biesta asks what the humanities can contribute to the field of teacher education. In addressing this question he turns to the idea of education as a Geisteswissenschaft as it was developed in the German‐speaking context in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this conception, education is configured as an interested academic discipline that engages with normative questions concerning the telos of education and does so with a focus on meaningful human action rather than human behavior. Viewing education this way highlights the role of value judgments in teaching. The values that are at stake in such judgments, Biesta argues, are not to be understood as moral values but as educational values, a view that raises some important questions about the specific nature of educational normativity. In a final step Biesta discusses how the idea of education as a Geisteswissenschaft makes a difference for the field of teacher education.     

对当前我国高等教育投资体制的再认识

高等教育投资不足仍然是制约当前我国高校发展的最大因素.当前,我国高等教育投资体制面临的主要问题有:国家财政压力巨大,对高等教育经费投入不足;高等教育投资与高等教育需求的矛盾日益加大;高等教育投资结构不舍理;高等教育投资地域性差异明显;高校债务不断增加.为解决这些问题,必须改革我国高等教育投资体制:改革政府拨款制度和方式,提高力度和效益;抑制高等教育需求过度膨胀,保持供求平衡;完善收费机制,确定合理的学费收费标准;大力发展校办产业;积极鼓励社会办学,补偿企业教育成本;招收留学生,增加教育收入,等等.     

Reconsidering the Ambitions and Position of Gifted Education

This article is a theoretical commentary to Robert J. Sternberg’s Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model as published in the Roeper Review. Though the proposed model is attractive and a formidable attempt to reform education in a politically and economically turbulent world that all too often ignores ethics and wisdom and increasingly shuns critical thinking, this article focuses on the two equally formidable obstacles to implementing the model, namely, systems inertia and evolutionary dynamics, neither of which is addressed by Sternberg (2017). In conclusion, a suggestion is made for the reevaluation of ambitions and position in the light of what the ACCEL model is proposed to potentially achieve.     

Reconsidering an Economy of Teacher Education

This article has an overall aim as follows: to develop an alternative understanding to a narrow view of education, and in particular teacher training—preparatory and continuing—in terms of economy, as well as the competencies needed for the teaching profession. It takes the view that such an alternative is or could be found in the ideas put forward by Paul Standish, where poetry, or a more poetic understanding of education, is necessary—particularly in regards to teacher training.     

高等教育研究：从多学科到跨学科

高等教育研究是根植于高等教育实践的高等教育规律的研究。高等教育实践是复杂性与多样性的统一。高等教育学学科处于其他外部学科的邻居位置,和教育学学科是母子关系,又是高等教育学学科内部各学科的母体学科。高等教育实践的复杂性和高等教育学独特的学科性质,决定了高等教育研究需要倡导突破学科壁垒、超越学科方法视角的跨学科研究。     

Mapping and Complicating Conversations about Indigenous Education

In this article I offer a series of critical reflections about existing efforts and achievements in Indigenous Education, with particular emphasis on the risks, tensions, and paradoxes that arise where different knowledge systems meet, and when Indigenous peoples ourselves hold contradictory educational desires. I focus on the idea of the land as first teacher and on the difficulties of enabling institutional educational processes that conceptualize it as a living entity, rather than an object, a resource a property. I seek to complicate our conversations to take account of the ways that colonial interests, competing investments, and structures of schooling shape the education that Indigenous youth today receive, and how this circumscribes the kinds of education it is possible for us to imagine. I conclude by offering a cartography that enables us to map how Indigenous youth encounter different ideologies of education and schooling, I also offer some thoughts about pedagogical possibilities that emerged from a course in which students were invited by Elders to witness a Sun Dance ceremony in Turtle Island.     

Interdisciplinary Teaching Within Engineering Education

This paper reports the development and implementation of a multi-disciplinary course called ‘sustainable development’ within engineering education at the University of Technology Eindhoven (TUE). In this course, students of different disciplines have to cooperate with each other in a project, with the aim of finding (more) sustainable solutions for an environmental issue or problem put forward by industry or (governmental) institutions (e.g. a zero-energy dwelling). The educational form is based on project-oriented education. The project group, which consists of six to eight students from at least three disciplines, is responsible for the results and the project. During their project, the students can rely on a tutor, who is primarily a process guide. Together with the principal, the tutor advises on whether or not the proposed working plan is realistic and can be realized within the given time of 160 h (two half-days over 20 weeks). At the end, the students have to present and defend their work before a committee, which consists of the tutor, the principal and a subject expert. Experience has shown that multi-disciplinary project work has been an excellent teaching method and addition to engineering education curricula, so improving not only knowledge but also interdisciplinary thinking and skills. Environmental issues need a multi-disciplinary approach, and this course bridges the gap between disciplines, so stimulating interdisciplinary work within engineering education.     

An Education Grounded in Biology: Interdisciplinary and Ethical Considerations

ABSTRACT—Work in the new area of Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) raises epistemological and ethical issues. With respect to epistemology, the norms of the component disciplines must be honored and the resulting amalgam must be more than a mere sum of the parts. With respect to ethics, the roles of scientist, educator, and practitioner each raise ethical dilemmas and the MBE worker must be cognizant of each set of dilemmas and the possible strains among them. Only if both of these spheres are confronted can good work be achieved in MBE.     

关于跨学科培养研究生的分析与思考

文章介绍了跨学科的基本内涵,分析了我国实现跨学科研究生培养的现实条件,并在此基础上对如何培养跨学科研究生进行了探究。     

高等教育学学科发展的跨学科研究

跨学科研究这个术语在我国高等教育科学研究中出现得比较晚,但类似的研究方法实际上很久之前就有所运用。回顾高等教育学跨学科研究发展历程和方法,正视高等教育学跨学科研究的现状和问题,以此来推进高等教育学学科的发展和跨学科研究的深入。