Transition-from-early-to-sophisticated-literacy (TESL) as a factor in cross-national achievement differences

The PISA studies of reading achievement of 15 year old students in OECD and partner nations show Anglophone nations to have continuing high proportions of weak readers (≤Level 2), with no improvement in this area from 2000 to 2006 (OECD, Science competencies for tomorrow’s world: Executive summary, 2007). The nations which have decreased their proportions of low achievers all use highly regular (transparent) orthographies, which expedite the development of efficient reading and writing skills (Galletly and Knight, Aust J Learn Disabil 9(4):4–11, 2004). While international scrutiny is being focussed on socio-cultural differences in education as a basis of nations’ achievement differences, little consideration is currently being applied to the speed of reading accuracy and spelling development. This is surprising, given the volume of research showing that orthographic regularity significantly expedites development of reading—accuracy and spelling—with very low rates of reading difficulties in nations with highly regular orthographies (Seymour et al., Br J Psychol 94:143–174, 2003, p. 174; Share, Psychol Bull 134(4):584–615, 2008, p. 615). This paper proposes Transition-from-early-to-sophisticated-literacy (TESL) as a variable for use when considering cross-national achievement differences. It is proposed that Complex TESL nations (including Anglophone nations) will need paradigmatically different mechanisms to those used by Resolved and Facilitated TESL nations, for improved literacy and academic outcomes by lower achievers.     

Driven to the Margins: Disabled students,inclusive schooling and the politics of possibility

This paper takes up Touraine's (2000) call for situating schools at the front of social democratisation to place inclusive schooling as a conceptual and strategic subset of the broader democratic project. In this respect the work of Bernstein (1996) and Knight (2000) become particularly helpful in providing a conceptual platform for critique of traditional forms of special education as hindrances to the extension of democratic schooling to that profoundly dispossessed people who are captured within the discursive net of special educational needs .     

Creating critical‐democratic citizenship education: empowering humanity and democracy in Dutch education

Dutch society and educational policy see citizenship education as being an important task of education. The first section of this paper discusses the concept of citizenship and citizenship education, and analyses educational developments in the Netherlands. Following on from this introduction the second part of the paper puts forward a critical democratic pedagogy of citizenship education. With this proposed democratic pedagogy in mind, the third and final part of the paper goes on to analyse the discourses and developing practices of citizenship education in the Netherlands, and proposes a number of new possibilities.     

Open education and critical pedagogy

This paper argues for a revaluation of the potential of open education to support more critical forms of pedagogy. Section 1 examines contemporary discourses around open education, offering a commentary on the perception of openness as both a disruptive force in education, and a potential solution to contemporary challenges. Section 2 examines the implications of the lack of consensus around what it means to be open, focusing on the example of commercial and proprietary claims to openness commonly known as ‘openwashing’. Section 3 uses Raymond's influential essay on open source software ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ as a framework for thinking through these issues, and about alternative power structures in open education. In Section 4, an explicit link is drawn between more equal and democratic power structures and the possibility for developing pedagogies which are critical and reflexive, providing examples which show how certain interpretations of openness can raise opportunities to support critical approaches to pedagogy.     

Persuasive Pedagogy: A New Paradigm for Mathematics Education

Mathematics teachers face a myriad of instructional obstacles. Since the early 1990s, mathematics education researchers have proposed the use of constructivist practices to counteract these ever-prevalent obstacles. While we do give credit to the choices of instructional activities the constructivist paradigm promotes, there are problems with its use as the foundation of mathematics pedagogy (e.g., Phillips, Educational Researcher 24: 5–12 1995; Simon, Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 26: 114–145 1995). In this paper, we will analyze and review the literature pertaining to the conceptual tenets and operational practices of constructivism, and the viability of these practices for meeting the professional teaching standards proposed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM; 2000). We will then review the literature pertaining to a paradigm of teaching that may be more applicable, that of persuasive pedagogical practices, and the ways in which these practices can differentially meet the goals of the mathematics standards. The differences between constructivism and persuasive pedagogy lead us to believe that the adoption of the theory of teaching as persuasion, or persuasive pedagogy, may be more appropriate for learning mathematics and the identification and correction of misconceptions. Further, these pedagogical practices correspond with suggestions for mathematical discourse provided by NCTM (2000).     

Reading pedagogy, “Evidence” and education policy: learning from history?

This paper examines the report of the Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (Department of Education, Science & Training (DEST) 2005) and explores the claims it makes about reading pedagogy and the centrality of particular “methods” or “approaches” to teaching backed by “scientific” evidence. Discourse analysis of the report shows that its logics allow only certain kinds of evidence to count in policy, and that it reduces difficult social and political issues to questions of technique. This allows the report to recommend an approach whereby qualitative insights and practitioners’ experience can be bypassed through valorising methods developed and verified by scientific researchers. The report’s claims are considered genealogically in the light of historical cases from the early nineteenth century, where educational reformers struggled with the issue of how to educate the children of the poor. In one, the monitorial system promoted by Lancaster in England, there was a focus on reading which made teachers or monitors artefacts of a standardised method. By way of contrast, in Scotland, a classroom approach developed by Stow (1854) made the teacher central to the process, as someone who sensitively interpreted and extended students’ experiences with texts. Stow’s approach would form the model for the modern classroom in compulsory state schooling, while the monitorial system would eventually be abandoned as ineffective. The historical cases demonstrate the dangers of approaches to policy that fail to account for the complex interplay between teacher, student and text in the reading lesson.     

Personal Story as Passport: Storytelling in border pedagogy

The Coexistence Workshop is a course in the teacher education program at an Israeli university. Its purpose is to promote the ability of prospective teachers to educate their pupils for a democratic society in which diversity is honored and coexistence becomes a reality. Teaching the Coexistence Workshop allows me to explore the usefulness of personal storytelling in learning about diversity and enabling students to become border crossers. The concept of border pedagogy (Freire, Giroux) speaks to issues of social justice and equality among groups divided in very concrete ways by the powerful but often invisible borders of race, social and economic class, gender and, in this case, ethnic-national identity. I examine the experience of border-crossing afforded by the Coexistence Workshop through an account of selected events, interrogating and interpreting this account by way of a discussion of the requirements of border pedagogy in the work of Giroux. My purpose is to elucidate some of the concrete meanings that the metaphor of border-crossing points to in the Israeli context, to gain insights for a pedagogy of difference in teacher education, and to illustrate some of the possibilities of mapping out terrains of commonality, connection and shared concern.     

Justification and Persuasion about Cloning: Arguments in Hwang’s Paper and Journalistic Reported Versions

We examine the argumentative structure of Hwang et al.’s (2004) paper about human somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT, or ‘therapeutic cloning’), contrasted with four Journalistic Reported Versions (JRV) of it, and with students’ summaries of one JRV. As the evaluation of evidence is one of the critical features of argumentation (Jiménez-Aleixandre 2008), the analysis focuses on the use of evidence, drawing from instruments to analyze written argumentation (Kelly et al. 2008) and from studies about the structure of empirical research reports (Swales 2001). The objectives are: 1) To examine the use of evidence and the argumentative structure of Hwang et al.’s Science, 303: 1669–1674 (2004) original paper in terms of the criteria: a) pertinence of the evidence presented to the claims; b) sufficiency of the evidence for the purpose of supporting the claims; and c) coordination of the evidence across epistemic levels. 2) To explore how the structure of Hwang’s paper translates into the JRV and into university students’ perceptions about the evidence supporting the claims. The argumentative structure of Hwang’s paper is such that its apparently ostensible main claim about NT constitutes a justification for a second claim about its therapeutic applications, for which no evidence is offered. However, this second claim receives prominent treatment in the JRV and in the students’ summaries. Implications for promoting critical reading in the classroom are discussed.     

Pedagogies for active citizenship: Learning through affective and cognitive domains for deeper democratic engagement

This paper reports on a two-year study that explored teachers' pedagogical approaches when implementing an active citizenship curriculum initiative in New Zealand. Our aim was to identify pedagogies which afforded potential for critical and transformative citizenship learning. We define critical and transformative social action through a fusion of critical pedagogy and Dewey's notion of democratic education. Data included teachers' classroom-based research as well as classroom observations and interviews with students. Our study suggested that citizenship learning through both affective and cognitive domains can provide for deeper opportunities for students to experience critical and transformative democratic engagement.     

Media and Pedagogy in Undergraduate Distance Education: A Theory-Based Meta-Analysis of Empirical Literature

This meta-analysis employs a theoretical framework in quantitatively synthesizing empirical studies that investigate the effects of distance education (DE) versus classroom instruction on undergraduate student achievement. Analyses of 218 findings from 103 studies were conducted according to how media were used to support DE pedagogy. The results indicate that the effect sizes far synchronous instructor-directed DE were consistent and not significantly different from zero; in asynchronous DE, media only supporting independent learning was generally less effective than media supporting collaborative discussion among students, although both subsets were significantly heterogeneous. Follow-up analysis of asynchronous DE findings was framed in terms of three patterns of interaction—student-content, student-instructor and student-student.     

The importance of place in indigenous science education

In this issue of Cultural Studies of Science Education, Mack and colleagues (Mack et al. 2011) seek to identify the necessary components of science education in Indigenous settings. Using a review of current research in informal science education in Indigenous settings, along with personal interviews with American educators engaged in these programs, the authors suggest some effective practices to use Indigenous ways of knowing to strengthen science programming. For the past 4 years, we have been interested in the importance of place in culturally relevant science education. We have explored the role of place and have used Gruenewald’s critical pedagogy of place (2003) to examine the importance of place in a variety of Indigenous contexts. In response to Mack and colleagues, in this paper we explore the importance of place as a means to reinhabituate Indigenous youth who live in urban, First Nation, and rural Costa Rican contexts.     

Imagining Democratic Futures for Public Universities: Educational Leadership Against Fatalism's Temptations

At current rates, almost all U.S. public universities could reach a point of zero state subsidy within the next fifty years. What is a public university without public funding? In this essay, Kathleen Knight Abowitz considers the future of public universities, drawing upon the analysis provided in John Dewey's Democracy and Education. Knight Abowitz conducts an initial institutional analysis through two broad prisms: that of the political landscape that authorizes universities as public institutions, and that of the present political–economic context of public education in general and public universities in particular. Dewey's conception of democratic education is then explored; his arguments regarding aims, experience, thinking, and social intelligence provide important tools for imagining the democratic futures of public universities today.     

Reproducing or Challenging Power in the Questions We Ask and the Methods We Use: A Framework for Activist Research in Urban Education

Many have argued that educational research does little to change (and may actually reproduce) the social-structural inequalities shaping the quality of high-poverty urban schools. Building from this premise, this paper asks: How can university-based scholars of urban education do research that encourages, produces, or informs change in urban schools and the conditions that shape them? I examine two broad aspects of urban educational research: the questions we ask and the methods we use. In both cases, I critique the dominant paradigm of technical rationality—one in which school failure is approached as a localized technical problem unveiled through neutral, objective, and experimental research methods. In contrast, I propose a paradigm of “political rationality” (Klees, Rizzini, & Dewees, 2000, Children on the streets of the Americas: homelessness, education and globalization in the United States, Brazil and Cuba. New York: Routledge) that approaches school failure and research practice as political issues situated within and shaped by social relations of power. Innovations in urban education research that reflect the logic of political rationality include: more contextualized and politicized analyses of urban schools, and the expanded use of engaged, collaborative, and participatory research methods. Drawing on this work and my experience implementing a participatory research project, I propose a framework for activist research in urban education, and critically evaluate the limits and possibilities of such work to effect change in urban schools.Kysa Nygreen is a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Community Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.     

Students’ Socio-Scientific Reasoning in an Astrobiological Context During Work with a Digital Learning Environment

In a European project—CoReflect—researchers in seven countries are developing, implementing and evaluating teaching sequences using a web-based platform (STOCHASMOS). The interactive web-based inquiry materials support collaborative and reflective work. The learning environments will be iteratively tested and refined, during different phases of the project. All learning environments are focusing “socio-scientific issues”. In this article we report from the pilot implementation of the Swedish learning environment which has an Astrobiology context. The socio-scientific driving questions are “Should we look for, and try to contact, extraterrestrial life?”, and “Should we transform Mars into a planet where humans can live in the future?” The students were in their last year of compulsory school (16 years old), and worked together in triads. We report from the groups’ decisions and the support used for their claims. On a group level a majority of the student groups in their final statements express reluctance towards both the search of extraterrestrial life and the terraforming of Mars. The support used by the students are reported and discussed. We also look more closely into the argumentation of one of the student groups. The results presented in this article, differ from earlier studies on students’ argumentation and decision making on socio-scientific issues (Aikenhead in Science education for everyday life. Evidence-based practice. Teachers College Press, New York, (2006) for an overview), in that they suggest that students do use science related arguments—both from “core” and “frontier” science—in their argumentation and decision making.     

Developing a ‘leading identity’: the relationship between students’ mathematical identities and their career and higher education aspirations

The construct of identity has been used widely in mathematics education in order to understand how students (and teachers) relate to and engage with the subject (Kaasila, 2007; Sfard & Prusak, 2005; Boaler, 2002). Drawing on cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), this paper adopts Leont’ev’s notion of leading activity in order to explore the key ‘significant’ activities that are implicated in the development of students’ reflexive understanding of self and how this may offer differing relations with mathematics. According to Leont’ev (1981), leading activities are those which are significant to the development of the individual’s psyche through the emergence of new motives for engagement. We suggest that alongside new motives for engagement comes a new understanding of self—a leading identity—which reflects a hierarchy of our motives. Narrative analysis of interviews with two students (aged 16–17 years old) in post-compulsory education, Mary and Lee, are presented. Mary holds a stable ‘vocational’ leading identity throughout her narrative and, thus, her motive for studying mathematics is defined by its ‘use value’ in terms of pursuing this vocation. In contrast, Lee develops a leading identity which is focused on the activity of studying and becoming a university student. As such, his motive for study is framed in terms of the exchange value of the qualifications he hopes to obtain. We argue that this empirical grounding of leading activity and leading identity offers new insights into students’ identity development.     

Toward a framework for the development of mathematical knowledge for teaching

Shulman (1986, 1987) coined the term pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to address what at that time had become increasingly evident—that content knowledge itself was not sufficient for teachers to be successful. Throughout the past two decades, researchers within the field of mathematics teacher education have been expanding the notion of PCK and developing more fine-grained conceptualizations of this knowledge for teaching mathematics. One such conceptualization that shows promise is mathematical knowledge for teaching—mathematical knowledge that is specifically useful in teaching mathematics. While mathematical knowledge for teaching has started to gain attention as an important concept in the mathematics teacher education research community, there is limited understanding of what it is, how one might recognize it, and how it might develop in the minds of teachers. In this article, we propose a framework for studying the development of mathematical knowledge for teaching that is grounded in research in both mathematics education and the learning sciences.

Critical Practice in Elementary Schools: Voice, Community, and a Curriculum of Life

This paper examines the differences andsimilarities in approaches to community, voiceand curriculum among three Canadian elementaryschools with respect to their potential toenact central aspects of a critical pedagogy:to extend voice to students and community;foster participatory, democratic education; andto cultivate critical reflection. The threeschools offer different conceptions andpractices. In one, a deficit model ofeducation seems to dominate; in the second, wefound an individual growth model of education;and in the third, a critical practice model ofeducation was the foundation for moredemocratic educational practices. We argue thatnot all change initiatives and approaches areequally valuable, and that the latter modelprovides a more profound and just educationalexperience for students.     

FROM “EXPLORING THE MIDDLE ZONE” TO “CONSTRUCTING A BRIDGE”: EXPERIMENTING IN THE SPIRAL BIANSHI MATHEMATICS CURRICULUM

The spiral bianshi curriculum, an improvement on bianshi teaching developed by Gu (2000) and in line with Marton’s theory of variation (Marton & Booth, 1997), was tried out in a primary school in Hong Kong. This improved theoretical framework for the spiral bianshi curriculum comprises four types of bianshi problems—the inductive bianshi, the broadening bianshi, the deepening bianshi, and the applicative bianshi. Based on this framework, the research team developed a set of teaching materials on the three topics of division of fraction, speed, and volume. The materials were tried out in 21 Primary 6 classes (a total of 686 students) in a school. The effect was compared with a reference group using standard textbook materials in Hong Kong. A series of instruments, pre-tests, and post-tests were administered to gauge the effects on students’ performance in solving routine and non-routine problems, as well as the affective outcomes including self-concept, attitude towards learning mathematics, approaches to learning, and conceptions of mathematics. The intervention effects of the experimental design were examined by hierarchical regression analysis. The research reveals that students using spiral bianshi teaching materials performed significantly better than their counterparts using standard textbook materials. However, no significant differences were identified among affective learning outcome variables despite the positive results on cognitive learning outcomes. The findings indicate that spiral bianshi curriculum has high potential in enhancing students’ learning effectiveness. However, further studies are needed to map its strengths in detail.     

Psychological knowledge for teaching critical thinking: the agency of epistemic activity,metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning

This study considers the case of a tutor whose students repeatedly evidenced significantly superior critical thinking in summative assessment. For the purpose of surfacing appropriate pedagogical action to promote critical thinking (Bassey, Case Study Research in Educational Settings, 1999), the singularity of one tutor’s reported pedagogical practice was explored through focus-group discussion. Qualitative analysis of the data, theoretically informed by phenomenography, suggested that the tutor’s reported practice, when compared with that of two peers, revealed clear pedagogical intentions to be necessary for teaching critical thinking; and that these intentions can be explained through the literatures on epistemic activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and student-centred learning. It is argued that a synthesised understanding of the literature that explores the nature and purpose of critical thinking —as outlined in the first part of this paper—is a prerequisite for constructing domain-specific pedagogical intentions for developing learners’ critical thinking, and that it is this extensive psychologically informed knowledge base which attenuates the risk of educationally important aspects of learning being overlooked. (De Corte, Learning and Instruction 10:249–266, 2000).