Prompting teachers’ constructive reflection: pupils’ questions as critical incidents

Constructive reflection is seen as an important ingredient in the professional development of teachers, in order to stimulate significant change in approaches to classroom practice and the general provision of science education in schools. This paper explores the use of pupils’ questions in provoking ‘critical incidents’ in the professional lives of teachers. It is suggested that pupils’ questions can be both indicative of their own conceptual change as well as being sophisticated prompts for teachers to examine their own thinking. Case studies of two teachers ‐‐ one primary and one secondary ‐‐ are used to illuminate how such critical incidents can lead to changes in teacher thinking, resulting then in changes in classroom practice in science. Suggestions are made for the use of pupils’ questions as critical incidents in the professional development of teachers.     

唐代佛教影响下的长安城市生活——以佛教寺院为中心

唐代是中国佛教发展的一个高峰期,长安作为唐代都城,佛教寺院星罗棋布,与佛教有关的活动更是丰富多彩,佛教寺院成为城市生活的舞台,朝廷在这里举行佛事活动,百姓僧众在这里举行节日庆典;同时佛教寺院也成为百姓娱乐活动的重要场所,不论是僧人的俗讲,还是庙会中的戏场,都对百姓有吸引力,此外风景优雅的寺院还是文人游乐、集会的场所。因此与佛教寺院有关的种种活动从一个侧面反映了唐代长安的城市生活,见证了长安文明,成为不可忽视的唐代佛教文化组成部分。     

佛教对蒙古文化的影响

元代蒙古人接受藏传佛教伊始,翻译佛经即成为最重要的内容。16世纪后期,藏传佛教再度传入蒙古地区。俺达汗和林丹汗时期继承并发扬了这一传统。印度、西藏佛教经典的蒙译,丰富了蒙古人的精神生活,极大地推动了蒙古族文化教育事业的发展,佛教文化构成了全部蒙古文化最重要的部分。同时,译经活动也为佛学的深入研究、保留印藏文化的优良传统做出了具有世界意义的重大贡献。     

A preliminary assessment of Buddhism’s contextualisation to the English RE classroom

In a preliminary study, 20 ‘migrant’ Buddhist parents and children from England participated in semi‐structured interviews to compare their home nurture with classroom presentation of Buddhism. In the home Buddhism received more time allocation and was presented mainly by the mother and monks – the content being that of ‘perpetuating structures’, often in an ethnic mother tongue and with ethos permeating all aspects of life. In school, by contrast, Buddhism was allocated little or no time, was presented mostly by the teacher – the content being meditation, Precepts and the more material aspects of the tradition – in English and with little in terms of amenable ethos. Dissonance apparent between home and school presentation of Buddhism is compared to similar findings for the Hindu and Sikh communities in Britain, and the need is highlighted for more attention to avoidance of assumptions in content, better use of allocated time and increased involvement of the ‘migrant’ Buddhist faith community. To this end, recommendations are made for further research.     

Doing qualitative research: the craft of naturalistic inquiry

Certain aspects of Thai Buddhism offer interesting support for some key concepts in action research. In particular, Buddhist notions of ‘insight’ and ‘mindfulness’ are helpful in clarifying the ‘reflection’ phase in the well-known action research ‘spiral’, and the concept of ‘Dependent Origination’ can be seen as embodying the whole action research cycle.     

《东京梦华录》中的儒、释、道三教合流研究

儒学、佛教、道教发展到北宋,形成了相互影响、相互吸收的局面。儒学吸收佛道思想,佛教、道教也积极向儒学靠拢,由此形成"以儒学为主体,以佛、道为辅翼"的文化特征。历经发展的儒、释、道三种文化呈现出新的面貌,糅合并倾向于世俗化,对北宋社会民俗风尚产生了广泛而深远的影响。     

唐代西域佛教寺院经济管理刍议

西域佛教是中国佛教发展史的重要组成部分,与之相适应产生的西域寺院经济更是佛教得以发扬光大的重要环节和前提条件。西域佛教寺院经济的发展及其管理模式和财产审计,对佛教的进一步传播和社会经济生活的丰富与发展,产生了极为深远的影响。     

浅析北魏时期山东佛教造像艺术

魏晋南北朝时期是多民族文明冲撞交融、社会秩序重组的特殊历史时期,也是中国佛教发展的重要阶段。山东地区是北方佛教活动的重要地区之一,至今仍保留着北魏时期直到北齐阶段的诸多造像、刻经、寺院等佛教遗迹。基于类型学的方法,研究山东地区北魏佛教造像变化的轨迹,讨论其造型风格来源、流变,结合当时当地佛教传播、社会背景和地域文化特点,寻找造像背后的诸多信息。     

试谈五台山藏传佛教与金刚神舞

五台山是全国唯一的汉传佛教与藏传佛教共居一地的佛教名山，金刚神舞是藏传佛教文化中的一朵奇葩。这种独特的艺术形式不但体现了藏民族独特的审美情趣，而且成为五台山佛教艺术的有机组成部分，表现出旺盛的艺术生命力。     

Cognitive conflict and intuitive rules

This paper is a part of an extensive project on the role of intuitive rules in science and mathematics education. First, we described the effects of two intuitive rules ‐‐ ‘Everything comes to an end’ and ‘Everything can be divided’ ‐‐ on seventh to twelfth grade students’ responses to successive division tasks related to mathematical and physical objects. Then, we studied the effect of an intervention, which provided students with two contradictory statements, one in line with students’ intuitive response, the other contradicting it, on their responses to various successive division tasks. It was found that this conflict‐based intervention did not improve students’ ability to differentiate between successive division processes related to mathematical objects and those related to material ones. These results reconfirmed that intuitive rules are stable and resistant to change. Finally, this paper raised the need for additional research related to the relationship between intuitive rules and formal knowledge.     

从“荷香莲韵”观佛教的“佛境禅心”——论传承“莲花崇拜”对佛教融入当代社会的现实意义

莲花崇拜（或莲花信仰）为佛教早期崇拜之一。佛教借助莲花形象以宣传佛教理论,借助莲花生物特征以阐述其义理,提供了引导教内僧众和教外信众追求的理想目标。佛教和其它宗教一样,要适应新的社会发展形势,认真审视其发展轨迹,挖掘其基本理论中与当代社会现实有价值的精神内核,与中国传统文化和现实社会主流文化实现新一轮的融合。     

Good School/Bad School: paradox and fabrication

This paper, drawn from an ESRC‐funded research project, deploys data from one secondary school to raise some general issues about the development of disciplinary technologies of surveillance and uses of performativity in education. It is argued that the use of Total Quality Management, School Development Planning and Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education) Inspections, individually and collectively produce an intensification of teachers’ work, submit teachers more directly to the ‘gaze’ of policy, and encourage schools and teachers to ‘fabricate’ themselves for the purposes of evaluation and comparison. The paper is premised on the argument that schools cannot be represented adequately within research (or evaluation) by simple stories or single essentialising tags; ‘good/bad’, ‘successful/failing’ ‐‐ they are inherently paradoxical institutions.     

汉传佛教讲经活动历史渊源及其发展脉络

汉传佛教讲经活动是中国古代佛教发展过程中的重要传播形式,它与佛经的翻译几乎同步展开,最早的讲经活动始于汉末魏初,并于两晋南北朝时期得到大力发展,至隋唐而大盛.讲经活动于唐时分化出僧讲和俗讲,僧讲以讲经、讲律、讲宗并举,制度较为完备、稳定;俗讲形式变化较大,宋以后仍有变异.讲经活动是中国古代社会重要的宗教文化现象之一,对其历史渊源及发展脉络进行研究,不仅可以看出佛教文化的发展变化特点,也可看出其蕴含的丰富文化内涵.     

朦胧中清晰的轮廓：中国翻译历史及理论发展之佛经翻译探索

虽然基督教、伊斯兰教和佛教并称为世界三大宗教,然而典籍浩瀚、哲理丰富、蕴含广博深奥的佛教是世界上其它的宗教都无法与之相比。纵观中国翻译事业,佛经翻译不仅是中国翻译的起点,且悠久的中国翻译史有半部是佛经翻译史。佛经的翻译有力地推动佛教的传播与发展,对中国历史、政治、宗教、哲学、文化等诸多领域产生不可估量的影响,同时为中国翻译理论奠定坚实的基础。佛经翻译活动已成为中国传统文化的重要有机组成部分。     

慧思择住南岳的佛教文化意蕴

南北朝后期,北齐高僧慧思辗转千里而择住南岳。这是缘于佛教发展的情势、慧思强烈的"末法意识",以及南岳具有兴盛佛教的地理人文因素。慧思择住南岳并以之为基地努力弘法,不仅开创了南岳佛教的事业,同时也进一步推动了中国南北佛教融合的历史进程,意义深远。     

略论泰国佛教教育与世俗教育关系的演变

古代泰国(暹罗),教育为佛教所垄断,寺院是教育的最主要场所,教育就是用来保存宗教传统的,因而世俗教育必然依附于佛教教育。近代以来,泰国逐渐走上现代化道路,泰国佛教世俗化的趋向亦在加快,其一个重要表现就是泰国的世俗教育逐渐脱离佛教教育并逐渐普及;教育日趋世俗化、现代化,成为泰国教育发展的主流。另一方面,佛教教育在保持传统同时,也处在缓慢变革中。佛教教育与世俗教育的发展交相辉映,体现了传统与现代的较完美结合。     

佛教疑伪经对道教思想的融摄——以敦煌遗书为考察对象

在佛教中国化过程中,佛教经典在翻译、释义等方面不断吸收中国本土文化的内容,由此也形成了佛教中的一类特殊经典——疑伪经。从佛道二教的关系来看,疑伪经中能够明显地反应出佛教对道教思想的吸收与融摄。注重修行的天厨思想、关注生命的益算增寿思想以及星辰人神化的星斗崇拜等方面,都能够反映出佛教疑伪经对道教思想的融摄。这是理解中国佛教特质的重要一环。     

Culture and equality in education

The advent of comprehensive education implies a search for a common culture, or a common treatment of culture, across the whole school population. This article reviews the present stage in this search, attempting to define a suitable treatment of culture by secondary schools. The history of schools’ treatment of cultural sources is briefly invoked, particularly the differences in treatment found in grammar and secondary modern schools. Purportedly progressive attitudes to ‘formal’ or ‘high’ culture are analysed and found to be too simplistic. Traditional education is shown not to have genuinely served its own’ supposed cultural aims, whilst progressives’ rejection to those aims is shown to be inadequate as a reaction to what traditional education actually did rather than claimed to do. It is proposed that a more engaged approach to formal culture, involving critical receptivity, is appropriate for all pupils, and would also require the nourishment of a more receptive attitude to pupils’ own creativity.

Since we have liberated the term ‘culture’ from meaning merely a rarified level of works of art, it has become so all‐embracing as to be almost unmanageable. Influenced by anthropology, we now tend to think of culture as extending to the most casual level of value and idea by which we live our daily lives. It even includes our most informal language habits.

The difficulty, of course, with such an all‐embracing notion is that it makes the subject almost impossible to talk about. Criteria of quality , and currency are blurred. Part of the same confusion is that the education system, formerly seen as the custodian of ‘culture’, now has no name for the special resources of knowledge which are ‐‐ or used to be ‐‐ its particular responsibility.

I will use culture here to mean those public works or activities which represent man to himself and are value laden. Thus literature, psychology, history, philosophy, politics, law, economics and sociology would all be included. They might have scientific elements but they still convey normative images of man.

If the concept of culture itself, even as so defined, has a blunt edge, we must discriminate elements within it in order to make the area susceptible to discussion. To get a picture of how schools, traditionally, have mediated culture, we must distinguish at least five broad elements:

1. formal, by which is meant that part in which academic and professional institutions specialize;

2. informal, meaning relatively spontaneous and non‐centralized activities, including ordinary conversation;

3. mass culture, such as films, television, popular music, advertising;

4. avant‐garde culture, arising out of a sense of crisis in the formal culture; and

5. ethnic, other than that which coincides with the content of previous categories.

These are pretty crude categories, but they are a little better than such common divisions as ‘high/low’, ‘popular/serious’ and ‘traditional/contemporary’, and they permit some analysis of relationships between different elements within our culture as a whole.     

道安佛教哲学思想探微

佛教最初在中国的流传,主要有两大系统:一为安世高系,此系重禅法,归实践宗教一类;二为支娄迦谶系,此系重义理,以宗教理论为主。道安佛教哲学思想的形成是在获得般若经的译文后逐步形成的。道安佛教哲学思想体现在三个方面:一是无在元化之前,空为众形之始;二是崇本息末;三是据真如,游法性。道安对佛教义理的揭示和宣传,促使佛教脱离方术化,发展成为一种精致的义理之学,使佛教真正渗透、融进中国文化和社会的深层。     

与众不同的释氏辅教文学——《幽明录》

《幽明录》是刘宋临川王刘义庆组织编纂的一部释氏辅教志怪小说集,历来学者对它的重视和研究程度不够,大部分研究只是对其中宣扬佛法,以及以＂刘晨阮肇＂为代表的几条具备唐传奇模式、开始＂有意为小说＂等内容的论述,缺乏整体深入的研究。本文从释氏辅教文学角度切入,通过对《幽明录》特殊之处的分析,确定它在佛教史、历史以及文学史领域的重要贡献。