Bayes,urns, and doomsday: A reply to Barker and Schrage

A Bayesian doomsday argument, originated by Brandon Carter, encourages the belief that the human race will end fairly soon because otherwise we should be unusually early humans. In response to the author's earlier article Risking the World's End (Interchange, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 49–58, 1990), Barker and Schrage protest (Interchange, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 285–288) that our being alive now is independent of what will happen later. This is true, but irrelevant. However, if the world is radically indeterministic then Carter's argument is weakened.     

The Multiple Faces of Visual Arts Education

This article identifies recent, mainly Nordic, research approaches to visual arts education. A concept map was developed as a heuristic tool in order to highlight salient traits and blind spots. Contemporary research typically has its origin either in education or in the art world, with an emphasis either on art as language or on art as text. These two dimensions were used to organise the studies and to select representative exemplars in different domains. The framework helped to chart the knowledge base of, and research approaches to, visual arts education. However, the result of blending subject matter and pedagogy tended to be a ‘mixture’ of viewpoints rather than emerging domains of subject‐specific pedagogical knowledge (Lee Shulman: an ‘amalgam’).     

Home Away from Home: Acclimatization of Filipino Elderly from being Home to a Sense of being “At Home” in an Elderly Institution

This grounded study examined the process of acclimatization or the process of changing perspectives of a person so as to get used to or feel “at home” among a select group of Filipino elderly in a nursing care facility. As institutionalization of the elderly is not typical in the Philippine context, varied responses were analyzed to understand the factors and the course that an elderly person undergoes over a set period of time to achieve acclimatization. Twenty elderly (n = 20) residents were purposively recruited and subjected to an in-depth interview that chronicled their experiences on their previous and present lives and on the process by which they were able to adjust to a relatively new setting. Preliminarily, a robotfoto was devised to obtain demographic data including visitation frequencies and familial relationships, and this was followed by an in-depth interview. Through the constant comparison method, an interesting model called the Hourglass of Acclimatization emerged. This model yielded two distinct phases contributing to successful acclimatization. One is the Conversion phase, or imbibing the main notion of transforming one's perspectives of him or herself and his or her environment; there is also the Immersion phase, which describes how an elderly involves him or herself completely into the life he or she is supposed to live. This emerged model can contribute to the development of nursing interventions focusing on elderly experiences in the entire course of relocation to a new environment other than what they call “home.”     

Understanding ‘religious understanding’ in religious education

This paper takes as its starting point, one of the explicit aims of religious education in England, namely, the development of students’ religious understanding. It shows how curriculum documentation, whilst stating that religious understanding is an aim of religious education fails to clearly outline what is meant by it. This paper draws upon long-standing and ongoing debates in the field and suggests that religious understanding may be best conceived as a spectrum of understanding. Approached in this way, religious understanding becomes not an all or nothing affair, but a lens through which the student of religion may regard the beliefs and practices before them. Finally, the paper proposes an interpretation of religious understanding, which focuses on the soteriological dimension of religion, thus providing the student with a particularly religious lens to understand religious traditions in religious education and concludes by outlining what such an approach might look like in practice.     

What is a Significant Educational Experience?

This article analyses the nature of an educational experience by taking as its starting point Dewey's Art as Experience in order to identify what it is that counts as a significant or worthwhile experience. Dewey suggests that an experience needs to have an integral character in which the different phases of the experience are related and which tends towards a conclusion. Furthermore, an experience also needs to have the character of what Dewey calls an ‘undergoing’, an engagement with content which may be difficult or painful. It is suggested that this kind of experience may be seen in terms of a ‘light’ pedagogy in which content is allowed to unfold. This is contrasted with educational experiences that are ‘teacher‐driven’ or ‘learner‐driven’.     

Exploring halaqah as research method: a tentative approach to developing Islamic research principles within a critical ‘indigenous’ framework

This paper explores a traditional Islamic pedagogy known as halaqah as a potentially useful authentic research method and contributes to discourses about critical and indigenous research methodologies through an analysis of Islamization of Knowledge and other ‘critical indigenous’ movements amongst Muslims. Islamic research principles are tentatively proposed and then used to assess the effectiveness of halaqah as an authentic Islamic research method through analysis of a small qualitative study. The study involved Muslim mother-teachers participating in halaqah to collaboratively reflect on their work as holistic Islamic educators who are developing a ‘critical indigenous’ education to meet the needs of Muslim children in contemporary Britain. This paper argues that halaqah is a more authentic research method in this study than a group interview or focus group as it enabled participants to articulate themselves within their own epistemological and ontological context and engage in critical reflection within an Islamic paradigm.     

Discontinuity of Reference Hinders Children's Learning of New Words

When referring to objects, adults package words, sentences, and gestures in ways that shape children's learning. Here, to understand how continuity of reference shapes word learning, an adult taught new words to 4-year-old children (N = 120) using either clusters of references to the same object or no sequential references to each object. In three experiments, the adult used a combination of labels and other object references, which provided informative discourse (e.g., This is small and green), neutral discourse (e.g., This is really great), or no verbal discourse. Switching verbal references from one object to another interfered with learning relative to providing clustered references to a particular object, revealing that discontinuity in discourse hinders children's encoding of new words.     

Passive education

Abstract

This paper does not present an advocacy of a passive education as opposed to an active education nor does it propose that passive education is in any way ‘better’ or more important than active education. Through readings of Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida and B.S. Johnson, and gentle critiques of Jacques Rancière and John Dewey, passive education is instead described and outlined as an education which occurs whether we attempt it or not. As such, the object of critique for this essay are forms of educational thought which, through fate or design, exclude the passive dimension, either within or outside of formal educational settings. An underlying component of this argument is therefore also that education does occur outside of formal educational settings and that, contra Gert Biesta and his critique of ‘learnification’, we may gain rather than lose something by attending to it as education.     

Didactic Restrictions on the Teacher’s Practice: The Case of Limits of Functions in Spanish High Schools

The Anthropological Theory of Didactics describes mathematical activity in terms of mathematical organisations or praxeologies and considers the teacher as the director of the didactic process the students carry out, a process that is structured along six dimensions or didactic moments. This paper begins with an outline of this epistemological and didactic model, which appears as a useful tool for the analysis of mathematical and teaching practices. It is used to identify the main characteristics of the mathematical organisation around the limits of functions as it is proposed to be taught at high school level. The observation of an empirical didactic process will finally show how the internal dynamics of the didactic process is affected by certain mathematical and didactic constraints that significantly determine the teacher’s practice and ultimately the mathematical organisation actually taught.     

Promoting retention and successful completion on Masters courses in education: a study comparing e‐tuition using asynchronous conferencing software with face‐to‐face tuition

This paper considers the influence of e‐tuition using an asynchronous written conferencing package, FirstClass, upon retention and success rates for Masters‐level courses in a distance learning programme as compared with similar courses that were supported in a traditional manner using face‐to‐face tuition. The paper investigates the common assumption that the use of e‐tuition might negatively influence both retention and success rates by studying data gathered on UK Open University Masters courses in education. These data have allowed direct comparisons between e‐tutored and face‐to‐face tutored courses to be made. The effect of linking assessment to participation in activities using FirstClass is also considered in this study. This research has revealed that e‐tutoring using FirstClass appears to have no significant positive or negative influence on either retention or success on such courses.     

Curriculum mapping food science programs: An approach to quantification of professional competencies

It is fundamental that students are able to identity where they have developed specific professional competencies during their study. This ensures students can not only articulate their competencies well in job applications and assessments but also draw on their experiences for use in the workplace. The aim of study was to ascertain if desirability of an element or competency as indicated by employers, was reflected in an equivalent level of program content, appropriately perceived by the student. A case study approach mapped elements of the previously developed Competencies for Food Graduate Careers framework against food sciences curricula at University of Nottingham. The mapping process facilitated evaluation of appropriate levels of inclusion of each element in degree programs, by recording types of content and experiences provided, in collaboration with teaching staff. Perspectives of the student experience were captured using an online survey. In addition, guidance from a prior industry survey provided context of the level of desirability for each element across the range of graduate roles in the United Kingdom. The results showed some areas of mismatch, where curricular content did not align with employer expectations or student perceptions. This has informed review of this curriculum, to best reflect “competency development” to meet the needs of the food industry. Recommendations were made to address gaps through enhancement of content, delivery, communication, or assessment. Additionally, the exercise has suggested a more informed development of curricula categorization and coding for future similar mapping activities.     

Recontextualizing psychosocial development in young children: a model of environmental identity development

This article presents an Environmental Identity Development model, which considers the progression of young children’s self-cognitions in relation to the natural world. We recontextualize four of Erikson’s psychosocial stages, in order to consider children’s identity development in learning in, about, and for the environment. Beginning with Trust in Nature vs. Mistrust in Nature, we argue that cognitions of comfort in the natural world vs. discomfort, provide the foundation for healthy environmental identity development. This trusting bond/relationship with nature allows children to gain Spatial Autonomy through collectively or independently creating their own sense of place in nature vs. feelings of doubt or Environmental Shame. As children progress, they gain Environmental Competencies, creative innovations to use the environment for both personal and social purposes vs. separation from nature or Environmental Disdain. Such competencies promote children’s agency in exercising Environmental Action, applied care/ethics aimed at building a sustainable future, as opposed to behaviors that cause Environmental Harm. Young children’s environmental identity develops in diverse ways and in distinct sociocultural and geographical contexts. Caregivers/educators play a unique role in recognizing and supporting the needs of individual children as they progress towards healthy environmental identity development.     

The discourse of German Geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik – A contextual reconstruction

The framework of German educational discourse of the twentieth century is so‐called geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik, or education as one of the humanities or arts rather than as a science. It triumphed around 1925 in the second half of the Weimar Republic. This article outlines in three steps the core elements of this educational discourse. First, it shows that the mode of thinking of the exponents of geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik was dualistic in a traditional Protestant manner. They juxtaposed empiry and Geist, plurality and unity, and outward and inward, and they favoured the inward unity and coherency of Geist. The contextual analysis shows, however, that the dualistic thought schema was virulent not only among German educationalists and philosophers, but also found strong expression in novelists and essayists like Thomas Mann, or the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Rudolf Eucken. Mainstream thinkers criticised the plural systems of Western democracy and capitalism – first and foremost, however, American democracy and capitalism – which were seen to epitomise both of these “un‐German” movements. The true German nature was thought to be an inner spiritual life, which was originally religious and through the course of history came to characterise the whole of German life and thought. It was believed that this spiritual inner life was revealed best by German art, particularly German music. This resistance to empiricism led, and this is the second step, to two analogous notions of the totality or wholeness of the individual and the nation. Man is not understood to be merely an individual, but more importantly a “personhood” (Persönlichkeit), which was described as an inward spiritual life that arose through effort and self‐cultivation, or Bildung. In addition to this inward personhood, however, the conception of “nationhood,” a national spiritual life as Volksstaat, or the ethnocultural nation as detached and distinguished from the political sphere, is seen as important. The individual person can perfect himself only in the framework of the typical characteristics of his Volk – the German Volk. Western democracy and plurality are seen as an atomistic “aggregate of individuals” and juxtaposed against the German concept of the ethnocultural Nation, the Volk community composing an organic unity that transcends the individual. Bildung is the spiritual formation of integrated, cultivated personalities who would orient themselves to the Volk community. In the curriculum of true education, along with the German language the study of Heimat becomes the fundamental element. In contrast to specialised subjects, the contents of Heimat would reflect the organic in the world, the totality of life: in the Volk and in the spiritual‐mental unity within the Persönlichkeit. The two constructions – deepest roots in the tradition of the Volk on one side, and highest inner spirituality in the personality on the other – resulted in education that had to oscillate between lowest and highest and, through this, had to lose sight of empirical, that is, social and political, dimensions. This is the third step that the present article wants to address. The true understanding of education, according to the exponents of geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik, puts social and political issues in their only proper place: inside the inner 760 Daniel Tröhler personality. Politicisation of the German person had to take place in the context of Volksstaat, not in democracy. To be free meant the embedding of the individual into the harmonious beauty of the whole. This notion created a social and political vacuum between the lowest denominator or totality of the Germanic people and the highest whole or totality of the Germanic personality, so that education had to be given the attribution – one that continues to be variously described and affirmed in education research in the German‐language realm up to the present day – that education is autonomous, independent of social or political context. This was based on the term Bildung – the inner ideology set against a pluralistic world. Autonomy means insisting on the inner freedom of man, on his inner coherency, and his will. In the midst of the confusing simultaneous demands of society on youth, educational autonomy is believed to be a means of assuring human unity and wholeness; it serves a protective dam to contain the danger of persons being ripped apart or pulled hither and yon. With its goal of awakening a unified spiritual life against the modern plural democratic world, the true educational community becomes crucial.     

Implicit Theories of Personality and Attributions of Hostile Intent: A Meta‐Analysis,an Experiment,and a Longitudinal Intervention

Past research has shown that hostile schemas and adverse experiences predict the hostile attributional bias. This research proposes that seemingly nonhostile beliefs (implicit theories about the malleability of personality) may also play a role in shaping it. Study 1 meta‐analytically summarized 11 original tests of this hypothesis (N = 1,659), and showed that among diverse adolescents aged 13–16 a fixed or entity theory about personality traits predicted greater hostile attributional biases, which mediated an effect on aggressive desires. Study 2 experimentally changed adolescents' implicit theories toward a malleable or incremental view and showed a reduction in hostile intent attributions. Study 3 delivered an incremental theory intervention that reduced hostile intent attributions and aggressive desires over an 8‐month period.     

A Taxonomy for Categorizing Generalizations: Generalizing Actions and Reflection Generalizations

This article presents a cohesive, empirically grounded categorization system differentiating the types of generalizations students constructed when reasoning mathematically. The generalization taxonomy developed out of an empirical study conducted during a 3-week teaching experiment and a series of individual interviews. Qualitative analysis of data from teaching sessions with 7 seventh-graders and individual interviews with 7 eighth-graders resulted in a taxonomy that distinguishes between students' activity as they generalize, or generalizing actions, and students' final statements of generalization, or reflection generalizations. The three major generalizing action categories that emerged from analysis are (a) relating, in which one forms an association between two or more problems or objects, (b) searching, in which one repeats an action to locate an element of similarity, and (c) extending, in which one expands a pattern or relation into a more general structure. Reflection generalizations took the form of identifications or statements, definitions, and the influence of prior ideas or strategies. By locating generalization within the learner's viewpoint, the taxonomy moves beyond casting it as an activity at which students either fail or succeed to allow researchers to identify what students see as general, and how they engage in the act of generalizing.     

MovementScapes as ecomotricity in ecopedagogy

ABSTRACT

This elaboration of an ecopedagogy in movementscapes aims to present an empirically informed account of the concept of ecomotricity as manifested in the living body interacting in/with nature (human-and-other-than-human). This interaction is ludic (where pleasure or joy/happiness gives meaning to the lived experience) and ecological (ecosomaesthetic-environmentally ethical-ecopolitical) and provides for revitalized and animated ecopedagogical practices (and research). Critical examples and insights are presented as praxical evidence of how the ecophenomenological and ludic essence of ecomotricity challenges individuals in particular movementscapes to question their ways of being-in-the-world as a form of ecobecoming potentiality. This step towards the (de)(re)construction of environmentally oriented outdoor experiential learning in moving body-time-space relationalities is, potentially, significant to overcoming some of the ontological limits to rational change too often uncritically presumed pedagogically regarding human-nature relations.     

The die is cast: Topical and ontological dimensions of the locus of the irreparable

Claims that a choice cannot be repeated or that its consequences may involve an irreparable loss draw upon powerful topical and ontological assumptions. This essay identifies this commonplace with certain loci of “Quality” and with a view of time similar to Heidegger's general interpretation of human existence as Ek‐sistenz—"the standing beyond oneself.” Such an understanding reveals strategic and ethical implications of the irreparable for human decision‐making.     

Example-Based Learning: Integrating Cognitive and Social-Cognitive Research Perspectives

Example-based learning has been studied from different perspectives. Cognitive research has mainly focused on worked examples, which typically provide students with a written worked-out didactical solution to a problem to study. Social-cognitive research has mostly focused on modeling examples, which provide students the opportunity to observe an adult or a peer model performing the task. The model can behave didactically or naturally, and the observation can take place face to face, on video, as a screen recording of the model's computer screen, or as an animation. This article reviews the contributions of the research on both types of example-based learning on questions such as why example-based learning is effective, for what kinds of tasks and learners it is effective, and how examples should be designed and delivered to students to optimize learning. This will show both the commonalities and the differences in research on example-based learning conducted from both perspectives and might inspire the identification of new research questions.     

The Magical Number 7

This article describes an interactive activity that involves students participating in a memory recall test. Data collected from the activity may be used to illustrate the one‐sample t test or one‐sample sign test.     

An Intergenerational E-mail Pal Project on Attitudes of College Students Toward Older Adults

Intergenerational interactions have demonstrated some success at improving attitudes of college students toward older adults. This quasiexperimental study involved undergraduate college students paired with older adults for a six-week e-mail exchange. Student attitudes toward older adults were measured pre- and posttest with Polizzi's revised version of the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD). Students were assigned to an intervention group (n = 23) or a control group (n = 20). The intervention group demonstrated significant improvement in attitude toward older adults as compared to the control group (F 14.694, p < .05). This educational approach holds promise for using readily accessible technology to connect the generations.