Telling Truths: Wounded Truths and the Activity of Truth Telling

It appears that being young and queer seems to be all about woundedness: it means experiencing suffering, including the risk of suicide, increased drug use, homelessness and violence. Yet how are these wounded truths told, and further, why is it that people in education seem to tell them "unproblematically"? This paper considers these questions by analysing wounded truth telling in the recent debate over the Western Australia Lesbian and Gay Law Reform Bill. Using <citeref rid="b7">Foucault's (2001)</citeref> discussion of Greek parrhesia (truth telling), the Western Australian debate is analysed in terms of its problematisation of wounded truth telling. Questions are raised regarding the implications of unproblematised educational practices that engage in the telling of wounded truths.     

回归事实:用故事讲述新闻

新闻学的本质是故事,用故事讲述新闻是新闻回归事实的新取向。本文首先分析了新闻的本质是故事,然后阐释了用故事讲述新闻的意义,并从新闻采访和新闻写作两个层面论述了用故事讲述新闻的途径。应该说,用故事讲述新闻,在娱乐化的基础上提升了新闻的内涵,拓展了新闻的影响力,使新闻更具有魅力。     

Educational Truth Telling in a More Reflexive Modernity

Postmodernist and poststructuralist discourses have, in the process of problematising what intellectual work looks like, opened up new spaces in which an examination of the processes of intellectual knowledge production can be located. Our intent in this article is to explore the problems and possibilities which emerge for particular forms of educational truth-telling under these conditions. While we examine these processes at a general level, our discussion is also grounded in an analysis of various attempts to tell particular truths about 'good' pedagogy in Physical Education (PE) in the transformed intellectual spaces of the contemporary university. There has been a long-running debate between various forms of expertise claiming to tell the truth about what constitutes good pedagogy in PE. This paper revisits this debate via a mobilisation of Hall's theorisation of articulation, and the reflexive modernisation thesis of Beck, Giddens and Lash. We argue that a more reflexive modernity profoundly problematises all forms of truth-telling in education.     

Collaboration and Action Research: a cautionary tale

Action research has become a widely accepted and recommended methodology for teacher research. With the current climate of collaborative planning within primary schools. it has been seen as a process which could exist naturally alongside such activity, with much being made in the rhetoric of its essentially ‘collaborative’ character. But such claims are problematic. They derive importantly from epistemological considerations, but weaknesses may be found in such arguments when they are considered against the reality of the process in action. This article considers the claims for the collaborative nature of action research in the context of the progress of a coordinated inquiry in a primary school, within which the author was involved. Whilst recognising their importance, it challenges the arguments for insisting on collaboration as a prerequisite for the most ‘effective’ action research, suggesting that all action research is fundamentally personal. It also raises the question of whether participation in the process may itself raise conflicts with the need for a collaborative structure to ensure critical reflection and valid knowledge claims, suggesting that action research may at times have effects at a personal level which could produce severe tensions in the maintenance of a collaborative situation.     

Implementing Godly Play in educational settings: a cautionary tale

At the heart of all curriculum decision-making is the learner. Contemporary early childhood education theory and practice emphasises young children’s agency and voice in their learning paying particular attention to valuing each child’s sociocultural contexts. As learners, children are considered capable and active participants rather than as deficit and passive recipients. How does the implementation of godly play in prior-to-school and school early years settings sit within a contemporary view of childhood? To what extent does this programme align with early childhood theory and practice? This paper seeks to evaluate the presence and place of godly play (which is not a curriculum and nor does it claim to be a curriculum) in the religiously affiliated early childhood education context in either prior-to-school or school settings. It is to be emphasised that this paper is not evaluating the presence and place of godly play in the faith community of the local parish where all who participate are believers coming together to share that faith and to have that faith strengthened. However, its presence and place in formal educational settings outside of parish faith communities is questionable and requires closer critique.     

Becoming civil in Hong Kong: a tale of two schools

This chapter describes the study as it was conducted in Hong Kong in two case study schools. The first is a new school located in a recently developed area close to the mainland border. The second is a long established school, operated by the Anglican Church. The results suggested that the goals promoted by the government were not a strong feature of the schools’ implemented programs. Although the planned goals of civic education in the first school reflected the national policy, in practice, the emphasis was on prescribing correct attitudes and the maintenance of order and discipline. In the second school, there was no continuity between the school's goal and the national policy; however, there was a strong continuity between the school's goal and the perspectives of all stakeholders.     

There's a monster in my house

Brian J. Stephenson writes fiction for and about young children, and he lives in Chicago, IL.     

Structural Identity Consultation: Story Telling as a Culture of Faith Transformation

In this contribution we explore processes of Structural Identity Consultation (SIC) with primary school teachers, and the opportunities this kind of team meetings offers for a nontraditional way to live with religious tradition(s). We take our start in everyday classrooms, characterized by religious diversity. The thoughts of Levinas, and his view on the relationship of “I” and “the other,” open our mind for the encounter with the other, and the sensibility for the need of the other, resulting in an “answer-ability” for the other. Structural Identity Consultations in our view create an open space to explore differing narrations on encounter. The narration of a young teacher, and the deconstructive reading of this narration as a text, shows the innovative power of (religious) tradition. It is our conviction that teachers' story telling in Structural Identity Consultations enlarges religious literacy and improves religious sensibility.     

Telling transgression: a bridge between contract and carnival in making student services policy

This research paper seeks to re-frame student services policy-making by providing traditionally-aged university students with a speaking position in the formulation of the contractual arrangements that affect them and bind them into adulthood. My involvement as a student services educator, policy-maker, and researcher is the unifying thread throughout this inquiry. The ambiguous context of adulthood for first year students within the historical and interlocking categories of social contract and medieval carnival provides the theoretical framework. These categories provide the basis of my critical narrative inquiry into transgression: my autobiographical remembrances of the contract-carnival interplay of student drinking in a Canadian university; and my reconstruction of a dialogically-generated drinking story from my research site in a UK university. This critical narrative inquiry supports my conclusion and action plan for inclusive, dialogical policy-making that engenders the telling of transgression through stories of carnival. I further conclude that the student services educator must take leadership responsibility for initiating this policy-making intervention that bridges carnival and contract, and that provides occasions for first year students to narrativize adulthood.     

Interweaving mathematics and pedagogy in task design: a tale of one task

In this article we introduce a usage-goal framework within which task design can be guided and analyzed. We tell a tale of one task, the Pentomino Problem, and its evolution through predictive analysis, trial, reflective analysis, and adjustment. In describing several iterations of the task implementation, we focus on mathematical affordances embedded in the design and also briefly touch upon pedagogical affordances.     

Telling Katrina Stories: Problems and Opportunities in Engaging Disaster

ELOQUENCE IS POWER: ORATORY AND PERFORMANCE IN EARLY AMERICA. By Sandra M. Gustafson. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000; pp vii + 287. Cloth $39.95; paper $17.95.

BIAS: A CBS INSIDER EXPOSES HOW THE MEDIA DISTORT THE NEWS. By Bernard Goldberg. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2002; pp. 214+. Cloth $27.95

THE UNFINISHED BOMBING: OKLAHOMA CITY IN AMERICAN MEMORY. By Edward T. Linenthal. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. pp. ix + 304. $30.00.

ALTERNATIVE RHETORICS: CHALLENGES TO THE RHETORICAL TRADITION. Edited by Laura Gray‐Rosendale and Sibylle Gruber. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001; pp. vii + 269. $65.50; paper $21.95.

ELECTRIC RHETORIC: CLASSICAL RHETORIC, ORALISM, AND A NEW LITERACY. By Kathleen E. Welch. Cambridge, MS: The MIT Press, 1999; 240 pp. + xvii. $35.00.     

Electronic portfolios in grades one,two and three: a cautionary tale

Some electronic portfolios (EPs) developers are proposing that EPs are suitable for implementation in primary education (i.e. kindergarten to grade three). Yet, empirical research evaluating the implementation and efficacy of EPs used in primary school settings at both the teacher and the student level is scarce. In this research, the authors attempted to implement EPs in grades one, two and three (approximate ages 6 through 8). EPs were reviewed to make the EP selection and in-depth collaborative planning with the teachers ensued. The main challenges for teachers and students were at the user interface level. Results from this cautionary tale suggest that implementation of EPs in primary education may be premature. While much potential exists in EPs, it has yet to be realised. Recommendations for improving EPs are suggested.     

There is a fly in my soup!

Diner:Waiter,there is a fly in my soup!Waiter:All right,I’ll get you a fork!就餐者:服务员,我的汤里有只苍蝇!服务员:好的,我去给你拿把叉子!     

Grasping at methodological understanding: a cautionary tale from insider research

This article offers an account of a doctoral insider research project that became problematic. The project was investigating mathematics teaching in a university in the UK, and by contrasting the research account with research diary entries pertaining to two interviewees, different interpretations of the interview data are evident. These differences offer illustrations of four aspects of the problematics of interviewing as follows: (1) personal relations and expectations position everyone in the interview; (2) the motivation for the research affects what the researcher learns; (3) the same material generates accounts that emphasize different things; and (4) things happen in people’s heads during the interviews that are not recorded. The argument developed by considering the examples is that authorial voice is constructed out of decisions regarding the data together with considerations regarding the researcher’s position. The validity of insider research requires reflexive consideration of the researcher’s position, and this is especially pertinent in the case of research undertaken by practitioner researchers on professional doctorates.     

Reflections on Comparative Education: Telling Tales in Honor of Andreas Kazamias

Emphasizing the important role of “history” within comparative education is the classic way, much celebrated in the writings of Andreas Kazamias, to treat this theme. This article uses a different perspective. The argument is that “comparative education” and “history” use two words as professional identifiers of a way of thinking and working. Metaphorically, they are wizard words, magical claims that mark off different epistemic territories: “context” for comparative education and “archive” for the historian. The construction and—especially—the confusions, the contradictions, and the consequences within these codings of professional identity and the relationships of the two fields of study are the themes of this article about comparative education.     

Telling data: From "A Tale of Inclusion"

This paper examines how ethnographers weave/separate "academic" voices from those of their participants in the field. Engaging some of the critical understandings in qualitative research regarding issues of representation and legitimization, authorship and authority, this paper questions where and with which of our ethnographic participants those understandings tend to be em/de/ployed, where and with whom are they still currently absent as ethnographers read and write their world. Exploring the problematics in, and the implications of, differently treating- invoking and textualizing- voices ethnographers conjure while in the field (There) and those they assemble from the academy (Here), this paper examines how a two-tiered system is created whereby the former are problematized, the latter are not. In spite of the poststructural, postcolonial understandings guiding much of the critical work in ethnography, such a twotiered system, this paper argues, induces Othering as well as creates a "There" which subsequently becomes epistemologically and ontologically detached from the "Here" of academe. Very much embedded in the practices it questions and critiques, this paper is not intended to provide solutions for practice but, rather, to broaden the conversation about practice. As such, it strives to promote ways of thinking critically about what critical ethnographers currently do and do not do rather than to further paralyze their inclination or ability to do.