The Teaching of Tragedy: Narrative and education

Abstract

The plague narrates the stories of a group of men whose lives interconnect around the experience of exile during the event of a plague. This article selects and summarizes themes from each of their stories. The purpose of these selections is to present an interpretation of Camus’ narratives that can be juxtaposed to an analysis, overleaf, of the educational nature of narratives, and in particular of the event of the tragedy. This article then maps out the narrative of the town and of seven men. It may be read alone as a reading of Camus’ novel with rich, yet unmapped, contributions to thinking about education, or it may be read concurrently with its analytical partner through which the meaning of Camus’ work is traced onto a contemporary tragedy and a city’s educational responses.     

Environmental education in television narratives: a Brazilian case study

Abstract

This article discusses recent Brazilian research on the relationship between environmental education and cultural studies. Television narratives about the environment and/or sustainability in our everyday lives are used to pose some initial questions about this relation. First, culture is discussed briefly showing how it potentially relates to teaching and informs our role as environmental educators. We argue that culturalist perspectives on research in environmental education politicise teaching practices, even though they are in a context that strays from prerogatives that envisage a future world marked by sustainable development and a green economy. We investigate the impacts of television narratives and images on our everyday lives wherein we are consistently taught particular written and visual messages about how to plan for our future. Examples are draw from the teaching effects of a Brazilian television programme called Repórter Eco, broadcast on a public television network, including the sustainable management of the baru (a typical tree from the Brazilia Cerrado). We argue the educational aspects of television programmes should receive critique, as the relationships established between people and various media artifacts produce particular meanings and ways of seeing the world. This presents a challenge for teachers as examining these subjective ways carefully requires critical examination, not only in terms of education for sustainability or environmental preservation, but also teaching using media.     

Handling challenge and becoming a teacher: an analysis of teachers’ narration about life competence education

Abstract

This article takes an interest in how teachers handle new challenges. The challenge in focus is a nonmandatory yet widespread subject in Swedish education called Livskunskap, Life Competence Education (LCE). The purposes of the present study are to identify and discuss notions of being a teacher actualized in teachers’ narratives about the challenge of LCE, and to discuss how narration may help teachers to handle and reflect upon professional challenges. Seven teachers were interviewed about their experiences from teaching LCE. The analysis showed how acts of defending, exploring, presenting, or resisting LCE were performed in the teachers’ narratives. LCE seems to actualize a narrative tension between two dominant aspects of teacher identity. On the one hand, there is an image of a socially committed teacher who cares about the emotional well-being of and relations to his/her students. On the other hand, there is an image of a knowledge-oriented teacher who connects with the students mainly by focusing on subject matters. Drawing upon the theoretical work, mainly by Michalinos Zembylas, I found that the teachers had opportunities to use narration as an arena for personal agency, but these opportunities were not necessarily taken in the present narratives.     

Narration and knowledge in direct solicitations

Although narration has been recognized as a complex mode of discourse, its role in professional communication has not been widely studied. This article examines narration in one form of professional communication—direct solicitations— and links narration to an important research issue: the social construction of knowledge, or the social justification of belief, through language. The direct solicitations are described, and the role of narration in justifying belief socially, for direct solicitations, is then discussed by examining narration and analysis as two means for organizing and expressing experience. The interweaving of these two means in direct solicitations is illustrated, but finally the importance of the narrational over the analytic in giving shape and significance to experience is asserted. Thus, the central role narratives play in justifying belief socially, for direct solicitations is described. Three sample narratives from three direct _ solicitations illustrate this discussion.     

Autobiographies of B’nai Mitzvah: The Meaning of B’nai Mitzvah and the Role Adolescents Believe Adults Play in the Process

ABSTRACT

B’nai mitzvah is a significant motivation for engagement in Jewish education. Professionals and families devote resources in aiding young people in becoming b’nai mitzvah. This article examines the adolescent narratives of b’nai mitzvah and the ways in which adults feature in their stories. Their accounts surface a belief that adults support them through pep talks, expressions of pride, helping them make choices, and being with them through the process. Teens see themselves responsible for their choices and achievements, but are appreciative of support. This article raises questions about what ways and by whom adolescents should be guided and supported.     

Futures in line? Occupational choice among migrant adult students in Sweden

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyse the ways in which migration plays out in adult students’ narratives about their occupational choice and future, focusing on three individual narratives of adult students with various experiences of migration to Sweden. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s conception of orientation, our results show how the adult students’ narratives on their future occupations are formed on the basis of migration, pertaining to their particular experiences of being recognised as migrant Others. Among the three students, similar challenges emerge in terms of their claims for belonging. One the one hand, the students do claim belonging to the Swedish social community. On the other hand, they are – as ‘migrants’ – repeatedly reminded of their non-belonging to this community. In various ways, they feel out of place. Although migration, in the narratives, is not played out one and the same way, but in various ways, engagement in adult education as a means of finding a job appear as the main orientation guiding the futures of the adult students, as being an important way of finding a future and claim one’s belonging to the Swedish social community.     

Envisioned and enacted practices: educational policies and the ‘politics of use’ in schools

ABSTRACT

It is widely known that there is a discrepancy between educational policy on the one side, and teaching and learning practices on the other. Most studies have been focusing on the sociocultural and micropolitical frames that shape teachers’ understandings and enactments of teaching, and that cause the vast diversity of classroom practices around the world. This article wants to draw attention to the ‘politics of use’ in teachers’ work: how teachers mobilize larger political narratives when implementing curriculum reform. Arguably, these narratives provide a shortcut between the central government and street-level actors, thus circumventing the logics of these actors’ immediate institutional environments.

In order to showcase the politics of use, the article uses the case of education for creativity as it is designed for and practiced at Chinese schools. The case reveals how education for creativity is compromised by requirements emanating from larger political programs when implemented in Chinese classrooms. The article challenges the view that educational policy necessarily moves through a trickle-down process, from higher to medium to lower-level actors. In cases of strong ideological alignment between street-level actors and central state actors, educational policy may in fact sidestep and hence neutralize important institutional actors.     

Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the National Council for Jewish Education

ABSTRACT

Citations are one of the ways that scholars engage one another in dialogue, debate, and discussion. As such, they represent a powerful way in which practitioners constitute themselves and others within a scholarly field. This article studies the citational practices of articles published in the Journal of Jewish Education over a 10-year period in order to discover how scholars have constituted the field of research in Jewish Education. Using social network analysis and qualitative examination, this article presents an unprecedented portrait of the field of knowledge including its strengths and new directions for scholarly investigation and analysis of how the field of research in Jewish education has been formed, and how citational references have shaped how scholars and practitioners understand what we know about Jewish education.     

Research in translation: an invitation to converse about the languages and locations of research

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to introduce Research in translation as a new section of the journal. Its goals are to expand and diversify the flow of ideas in the sociology of education, to make available perspectives and notions from other research traditions to readers from diverse parts of the world, and to enrich the conversations about how these movements transform the ways in which social knowledge about education is produced. This introduction underlines that research is always produced in and as translation between different sets of practices and registers; it also wants to visibilize the craft of translation and its effects in the production of knowledge in an increasingly internationalized, plurilingual academia.     

Materialising effects of difference in sex education: the ‘absurd’ banana penis

ABSTRACT

This article scrutinises pedagogical practices undergone in sexuality education as recorded with two intergenerational groups of former Australian schoolgirls. It discusses the surprising widespread use of the plastic, white, circumcised banana penis in sexuality education experienced by the younger group. The normalisation of the white, circumcised, plastic, banana penis (without reference to the vulva and/or vagina) is telling about what bodies matter and how sex materialises. The banana penis, as uncritically modelled in sexuality education, effectively materialises difference as both sexist and racist. This paper considers diffractive thinking in classroom with these practices, with students, and ways pedagogical practice may bring about a renormalisation that moves from reiterating racist heteronormative hierarchies to a creative opening up of ways students (as sexed, gendered and raced) can come to safely and affirmatively negotiate differences.     

Constructing collective memory for (de)colonisation: Taiwanese images in history textbooks, 1950–1987

ABSTRACT

History curriculum and textbooks, as a key mechanism of constructing collective memory, play a critical role in shaping national, social, and cultural imaginations of the young. This paper analyses history textbooks in Taiwan during the martial law period (1950–1987) to explore narratives about Taiwan and examines the ways in which those narratives as collective memory created particular images of Taiwan. The analysis indicates that history textbooks delineated two threads of narrative, one is a Sinicisation narrative, namely Chinese colonisation, and the other is Chinese restoration narrative. The Sinicisation narrative constructed particular collective memory about Taiwan being of Chinese descent and an inheritor of Chinese culture, lost and restored by China after World War II. In the narrative of restoration, Taiwan was imagined as reborn to be the model child of Chinese descent that was obligated to emancipate all Chinese compatriots from Communism and to ultimately realise the goal of Chinese reunification. These narratives served for emancipating Taiwan from Japanese colonisation and constructed particular collective memory that Sinicised Taiwan for Chinese restoration. The image of Taiwan as Chinese descent, identified with Chinese culture, has endured to the present and continue to shape imaginations and discourses about Taiwan in the present.     

Persevering,educating and influencing a change: a case study of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander narratives of academic success

ABSTRACT

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ experiences in Australian higher education continue to be influenced by the sociopolitical narratives of alterity which locate the students as more likely than their nonIndigenous peers to struggle academically and need support. These western-centric perceptions of indigeneities not only affect Indigenous students’ everyday university experiences but can even influence their decision whether to persist with their studies or not. Drawing on data collected in a large, metropolitan Australian university, this article presents a case study of Indigenous students’ ways of perceiving and resisting their positioning by the dominant university systems as ‘problematic’, at risk of failure and needing support. Specifically, the article explores educational pathways of three Indigenous students, their narratives exemplifying primary strategies of enacting and articulating resistances to the dominant education structures in order to fuel academic success.     

Beyond Education: Meursault and being ordinary

Abstract

The infamous story of a young office clerk called Meursault has long entertained literary critics, scholars, musicians, artists and school teachers for the light and shadow that it reveals around and on the human condition. His character has been lauded as existential hero and rebuked as lacking agency. In this article, his story, in Camus’ The outsider, is explored as an educational challenge to a society to reflect on the territory it occupies, and the ways in which the sociopolitical machinery deals with perceived anomalies (like the character Meursault). The article explores notions of normalcy and ordinariness in relation to Meursault’s thinking and experience in order to consider the idea of what lies outside, or beyond, thinking about education. The argument here is that Meursault’s failure to intervene in his own life challenges both the ways in which we are ordinarily educated and the ways in which we ordinarily resist our education.     

Homeschooling,Virtual Learning,and the Eroding Public/Private Binary

ABSTRACT

Regulators ubiquitously dichotomize schooling into two discrete sectors: public and private. Although homeschooling is regulated in some contexts as a third sector, the general approach is to treat it as a species of private education by subjecting it to public regulation while simultaneously denying it public funds. But the public/private binary is increasingly difficult to sustain as charter schools multiply and, especially, as virtual schooling increasingly penetrates primary and secondary education. Public school systems are deploying virtual education in ways that erode once impermeable walls between public and private. Many obstacles to homeschooling will fall with those walls—particularly obstacles related to government financing of homeschooling activities.     

A Comment on “The Adventures of Lead Commander: An Environmental Education Program to Prevent Lead Poisoning in Young Children”

Abstract

This article comments on a study designed to examine the effectiveness of the family-based, environmental education lead-poisoning program, The Adventures of Lead Commander (Marlowe & Trathen, 1996). Design and methodological weaknesses, such as the use of hair lead concentrations as a biomarker, call into question conclusions reached in the study. The effectiveness of the educational program cannot be ascertained from the data collected. It should be stressed, however, that environmental education projects such as The Adventures of Lead Commander are important in helping to educate the public and school children about lead poisoning and ways of minimizing exposure to this neurotoxin. Education and removal of lead sources are primary methods of reducing lead exposure.     

Memory and critical education: Approaches in the District Six Museum

Abstract

This article begins with the argument that education has become an important site of activity in museums around the world. This development has been of crucial significance for South Africa where many new museums have come into being and where old museums are now taking new courses. The challenge that these museums are having to confront is how to deal with the question of their public education responsibilities with respect to issues such as race, identity, nation and nation-building. How does the museum tell its story in ways that are inclusive and at the same time critical? How these challenges play themselves out in a museum such as the District Six Museum is important to talk about. What this discussion about the District Six Museum reveals is how little attention is paid to forms of public education in institutions outside of the school in South Africa. It is significant that the museum, which has come to play such a significant role in the reimagination of South Africa and is assuming in the intentions of the new government such a pivotal role in teaching South Africans about their pasts, is understood so poorly. The article uses the District Six Museum example to look critically at what a new museum educational practice might consist of.     

Special educational needs and art and design education: plural perspectives on exclusion

Abstract

Education policy proposals by the UK Coalition government appeared to be based on a process of consultation, participation and representation. However, policy formation seems to prioritise and confirm particular ways of knowing and being in the world. This article recognises the ontological and epistemological invalidation at work in education policy by examining the shared context for policy formation in special educational needs (SEN/D) and art and design education. There is value in recognising plurality, acknowledging the ways in which apparently singular policies relating to special education are understood through subject or disciplinary perspectives. The neoliberal aim to foster an economically productive ‘subject’ is evident in policy formation relating to art and design education as well as SEN/D. Both subjects, the disabled child and art and design education, are defined as excessive and are excluded where they do not conform to particular notions of productivity. The article explores theoretical frameworks that are essential for recognising meaning in education when subjects cannot be put to work.     

Conflict,risk and authority: female faculty members' stories of change

Abstract

Most studies of gender and information technology have investigated gender differences in the relationships between education and achievement, and attitudes towards and use of computers. Few have explored gendered experiences of faculty members using learning technologies in higher education. The study on which this article is based explored the experiences of 47 Canadian female faculty members integrating information and communications technologies (ICTs) into the higher education learning environment. The stories they told suggest that learning to use ICT in ways coherent with their values may be an intensely personal process of cognitive and cultural change for these women, in which beliefs and values may be examined and even realignedas they develop personal, moral authority. When faculty members explicitly contextualize the process as social, relational learning, it has the potential to be transformative at personal and societal (institutional) levels. The interrelated theoretical constructs of transformative or action learning, the development of authority-into-agency, and technology issues related to feminist pedagogy frame the three illustrative narratives of experience presented.     

Planned Educational Change in Colleges of Further Education: The Strategic Elements

Summary

This article reviews recent progress in the reform of initial teacher education in England and Wales. The first part outlines the development of government policy, with particular emphasis on changes announced in the speech of Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Education, to the North of England Education Conference in January 1992. The second part presents an analysis of the policy, identifying its roots and some conceptual and practical difficulties. Part three surveys ways in which provision of initial teacher education in institutions of higher education has been responding to internal and external pressures for change, with emphasis on developments since 1989. The final part makes proposals about the future direction of policy, arguing that there remain key questions to be addressed about the nature of teacher education, the process of change, and the relationship of teacher education to higher education.     

Useful citizens,useful citizenship: cultural contexts of Sámi education in early twentieth-century Norway,Sweden, and Finland

Abstract

This article investigates Sámi elementary education in early twentieth-century Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The main focus lies on cultural contexts that frame and limit language use. The key analytical concepts are useful citizen and useful citizenship. Through these concepts the article probes the ways in which governmental educational authorities and Sámi teachers talked about education and citizenship. Studying these concepts and the cultural contexts behind them sheds light on the formation phase of Nordic citizenship. Full-scale citizenship was not offered to all individuals inside the nation state. Where it was, it had certain conditions that excluded cultural elements of minority populations. Sámi teachers defined citizenship mainly within the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish nation states. However, some tendencies towards a more cross-national notion of Sámi identity can be discerned.