Picturing progressive texts: images of ‘democratic schooling’ in the work of John and Evelyn Dewey and contemporaries

Visual images played an increasing role in professional discourse and in popular and political debate about progressive education over a century or more. In the early 1900s photography was adopted by some progressive texts to convey new ideas illustrated by practice. This paper highlights an iconic example: John and Evelyn Dewey’s celebrated Schools of To-Morrow (1915), with reference to a small selection of its photographic illustrations. Consideration is given to how images were constructed, their status as historical evidence and issues of interpretation. Comparison is made with other illustrated works, preceding and following Schools of To-Morrow, by advocates of child- or student-centred pedagogies. The article urges critical reflection on visual representation in arguments for and against progressivism in more recent times. Insights drawn from earlier examples should be borne in mind by historians seeking to evaluate the role of pictorial sources in discourses of pedagogical reform.     

Against the Dark: Antiblackness in Education Policy and Discourse

I argue that analyses of racial(ised) discourse and policy processes in education must grapple with cultural disregard for and disgust with blackness. This article explains how a theorization of antiblackness allows one to more precisely identify and respond to racism in education discourse and in the formation and implementation of education policy. I contend that deeply embedded within racialized policy discourses is not merely a concern about disproportionality or inequality, but also a concern with the bodies of Black people, the signification of (their) Blackness, and the threat posed by the Black to the educational well-being of other students. Using school (de)segregation as an example, I demonstrate how policy discourse is informed by antiblackness, and consider what an awareness of antiblackness means for educational policy and practice.     

Defining the real: context and beyond

This paper draws attention to the trend to consider context in educational discourse. It documents the increasing use of “context” in everyday educational talk and in educational research and begins to consider the implications of this trend for the theory and practice of education. The paper considers different ways that context is used and suggests that over the last 5‐10 years conceptions of context have shifted. As well as being understood spatially as the outside or backdrop relative to a phenomenon of interest, context is increasingly being considered in a more ephemeral figure and ground relationship. I argue that this shift marks a significant reframing of education and its implications in the practice and politics of education and educational research.     

Expanding discourse repertoires with hybridity

In ??Hybrid discourse practice and science learning?? Kamberelis and Wehunt present a theoretically rich argument about the potential of hybrid discourses for science learning. These discourses draw from different forms of ??talk, social practice, and material practices?? to create interactions that are ??intertextually complex?? and ??interactionally dynamic.?? The hybrid discourse practices are described as involving the dynamic interplay of at least three key elements: ??the lamination of multiple cultural frames, the shifting relations between people and their discourse, and the shifting power relations between and among people.?? Each of these elements requires a respective unit of analysis and are often mutually reinforcing. The authors present a theoretically cogent argument for the study of hybrid discourse practices and identify the potential such discourses may have for science education. This theoretical development leads to an analysis of spoken and written discourse around a set of educational events concerning the investigation of owl pellets by two fifth grade students, their classmates, and teacher. Two discourse segments are presented and analyzed by the authors in detail. The first is a discourse analysis of the dissection of the owl pellet by two students, Kyle and Max. The second analysis examines the science report of these same two students. In this article, I pose a number of questions about the study with the hope that by doing so I expand the conversation around the insightful analysis presented.     

中国摄影教育任重而道远——转型时期的中国摄影教育的转型诌议

本文就社会转型对摄影教育产生的影响从几个方面进行探讨。通过分析摄影教育从办学模式到生源的转变;从数字技术对传统技术的冲击到市场经济条件下的人才培养要求等变化,探讨摄影教育如何适应社会的转型;提出转型时期的中国摄影教育应以社会需求和市场需求为主导,从课程的设置、师资、教材等方面入手,努力提高摄影教育的水平,不断顺应社会的发展,从而培养出新一代适应市场需求、基础扎实、知识面宽、动手能力强、综合素质高的应用型人才。     

Chrisi Bailey Award

The Arts Council run Chrisi Bailey Award for young people's photography in schools is now entering it fifteenth year. The spirit of the award remains that of Chrisi Bailey's own view of photography as, an active medium of participation, through which the child can make discoveries, record and communicate about themselves and the world around them. This paper uses the work of the Chrisi Bailey Award as a kind of historical record, an archive, which can now be looked at in terms of changes in photography, representation and education. It asks three related questions. What view of creative, educational practice is present in the school projects? What view of representation is encoded in the selected images? What view of photography and its technologies are embedded in the children's practices? Through answering these questions the paper attempts to chart continuities and changes in our understanding of the cultural politics of self‐representation and the effects of digital technologies upon photographic practice. The paper reflects upon the tradition of photography in education and attempts to update its agendas.     

Before Student Teaching: How Undergraduate Students in Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Programs Describe Their Early Classroom-Based Experience

Classroom-based experiences, alternatively known as practica, are an integral component of undergraduate teacher preparation programs, which provide students essential opportunities to apply knowledge in practice. Though much is known about student teaching, much less is known about students’ earlier classroom-based experiences. This qualitative study explores how early childhood care and education students describe their early classroom-based experience. Thirty-four students enrolled in a teacher preparation program participated in interviews, submitted journals, and responded to survey questions about their early classroom-based experience. Results are presented in terms of how students talk about their experiences—belonging or not belonging in the classroom—and what students talk about when discussing their experiences, including communication, support, freedom, new learning, and “the children.” These themes are discussed in terms of students’ experiences in the classroom and implications for undergraduate teacher preparation in early childhood education.     

Solomon Islands school leaders readiness for inclusive education

In this paper, I critically examine the discourse surrounding response to intervention (RTI), a US-based education reform that has garnered a considerable amount of attention (as well as controversy) in a very short amount of time. A multi-pronged reform effort, RTI is a tiered approach to delivering instructional intervention to students at risk, an on-going and systematic model of monitoring student performance, as well as an alternative to the ability/achievement discrepancy model for identifying learning disabilities. In this paper, I argue, however, that RTI is not so much a reform but a tactic, aimed at returning to the status quo of segregated special education and reinvigorating many of the foundational assumptions of traditional special education practice.     

论高等教育摄影教学中构思能力启迪培养的五步教学法

文章从摄影教学一线出发,剖析了在摄影教学中发现的若干问题,并结合实践案例总结提出了摄影构思能力启迪和培养的五步教学法,指出了学生摄影构思能力培养过程中必须把握的四要素。为高等教育中摄影教学的理论与实践研究作了有益的尝试。     

Retelling herstory: to be a female Bedouin teacher differently

The aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion on education in Palestinian/Bedouin society in the Negev in Israel and it proposes the narrative of female trainee teachers as the basis of an analysis of the changing status of Bedouin women and their community. The academic discourse on teaching in Bedouin society ignores the potential existence of an alternative discussion outside the dichotomous area of ‘traditional and modern’ and/or ‘Jewish and Bedouin’. Bedouin society in the Negev constitutes a particularly interesting case for a meaningful study of the perception of teaching, chiefly because education has already become a significant practice in the life of a community that seeks integration into Israeli society. The teaching profession gives Bedouin women from the Negev a relatively new opportunity to integrate into education and employment and by so doing they reconstruct a new educational discourse.

Il’il: When we were little, we used to laugh about me—hmm—a teacher. Me with pupils, and I’d teach them, like the teacher who used to teach us, with a little board, and I write for them and they are my pupils, as it were, and I give them tests and all sorts. And I love the profession very, very much because I love the pupils…

Nura: I loved learning but this isn’t the profession that I want to study—to be a teacher … You can help someone in this profession. I see myself going in that direction … First of all, you have to give, to impart something to the children in front of you, who have come to learn. You have to give to these children, to be conscientious. You don’t just come. You haven’t chosen the profession because you wanted to, but you have to cope with it.     

Towards controlling variables: A theoretical appraisal and a teachable result

This study examines the nature of discourse in which students talk with each other about what they think. Of particular interest are student-generated inquiry discussions in which the students engage in extended student-student-student interactions without much intervention from myself, the instructor. Data sources include audio- and video-tapes of class discussions, copies of student papers, and my reflective journals. Analysis involves interpretating utterances in terms of indicators of inquiry learning, student questioning, and collaborative sense-making. Two aspects of my practices seem to foster student-generated inquiry discussions: distributed authority and quietness. I no longer view myself as a facilitator of discussions but rather as an organizer of learning events in which my students share the authority to make decisions about what to say and do next. I practice 'quietness' by waiting before and after students talk (wait time), listening to the details of other people's thinking without interrupting them (attentive silence) and withholding my own opinions and understandings while assisting others in expressing theirs (reticence).     

创建传统摄影与数码摄影相结合的摄影实验室

摄影实验室是开展高校摄影教学的核心场所,在数码科技给传统的摄影理论和摄影技术带来巨大冲击的时代,传统摄影实验室是否也应该彻底地被数码摄影实验室取代呢?以武汉大学新闻传播学实验中心的传统摄影与数码摄影相结合的摄影室建设为典型实例,从摄影实验教学的目的、传统和数码摄影的区别,以及传统摄影的重要性进行分析,阐述了传统摄影室在摄影教学过程中不可替代的地位和作用。     

Establishing Scientific Discourse in Classroom Interaction Teacher Students’ Orientation to Mundane Versus Technical Talk in the School Subject Norwegian

This article reports a case study on classroom interaction in teacher education in Norway. It addresses how teacher students in the school subject Norwegian constitute scientific talk in a student-led discussion. First, the analysis reveals tension in the classroom conversation between mundane talk—that is, where students make claims with reference to their personal epistemic domain—and scientific talk—that is, where students make claims with reference to a shared scientific epistemic domain. Then, the analysis identifies specific interactional resources (reproach, embedded correction, formulation, and recontextualization) that the students use to regulate and bridge the 2 levels of discourse. Finally, the article provides insights into how scientific discourse is collaboratively established through conversational turns and considers how teacher education might use these findings for communication-skill training.     

Body talk: students’ identity construction while discussing a socioscientific issue

Vision II school science is often stated to be a democratic and inclusive form of science education. But what characterizes the subject who fits into the Vision II school science? Who is the desirable student and who is constructed as ill-fitting? This article explores discourses that structure the Vision II science classroom, and how different students construct their identities inside these discourses. In the article we consider school science as an order of discourses which restricts and enables what is possible to think and say and what subject-positions those are available and non-available. The results show that students’ talk about a SSI about body and health is constituted by several discourses. We have analyzed how school science discourse, body discourse and general school discourse are structuring the discussions. But these discourses are used in different ways depending on how the students construct their identities in relation to available subject positions, which are dependent on how students at the same time are “doing” gender and social class. As an example, middle class girls show resistance against SSI-work since the practice is threatening their identity as “successful students”. This article uses a sociopolitical perspective in its discussions on inclusion and exclusion in the practice of Vision II. It raises critical issues about the inherited complexity of SSI with meetings and/or collisions between discourses. Even if the empirical results from this qualitative study are situated in specific cultural contexts, they contribute with new questions to ask concerning SSI and Vision II school science.     

Here I am Now! Critical ethnography and community service-learning with immigrant and refugee undergraduate students and youth

Here I am Now! is the title a multi-ethnic group of immigrant and refugee undergraduate students and neighboring urban Vietnamese and Cambodian refugee youth gave to their participatory photography installation. The exhibit was the culmination of undergraduate students’ participation in a series of Community Service-Learning (CSL) courses offered through CIRCLE (Center for Immigrant and Refugee Community Leadership and Empowerment) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. While CSL has become an established educational practice at most US universities campuses, little research has been conducted viewing the educational impact of this pedagogy on diverse student populations. The majority of the scholarship focuses on the experiences of white middle-class students engaged with communities from unfamiliar and different socio-cultural, racial, ethic and economic backgrounds.

This paper examines how immigrant and refugee undergraduate students understood their participation in a creative community service-learning experience where they mentored youth from familiar and similar ethno-cultural contexts. To understand this meaning-making process I employed critical ethnographic approaches and analyzed student narratives and interviews. Through the prisms of critical pedagogy, situated learning theory, and funds of knowledge concept, I viewed the higher education context, analyzed the situation under study and developed an emerging framework for CSL pedagogy with diverse communities. These theories inform the view that culturally relevant pedagogy emphasizing peer-learning, critical thinking, artistic potential and community resources offers diverse undergraduate students alternative and creative spaces of critique and possibility in their higher education and community service-learning experiences.     

培养中学生物理思维的深刻性、灵活性和批判性

物理教育就是教学生物理思维。“发展学生的思维”是中学物理教学的第一要务，培养物理思维能力的有效途径是训练物理思维品质。本主要结合初中物理教与学的实践，就培养学生物理思维的深刻性、灵活性和批判性方面谈了些体验。     

The Students' Role in French Academic Deliberative Democracy

Since 1968, according to the French higher education law, elected students must participate in the different academic boards in every university. As trustees, they must formulate opinions about the institutional policy. Moreover, they must deliberate on equal terms with teachers. According to a common discourse, this democratic activity is still considered as a nonsense because of some students’ structural weaknesses: very low turnout at the elections of their representatives, very high absenteeism rate of these miselected representatives and incapacity to formulate responsible and pragmatic proposals. This students’ uselessness in the academic participatory governance process would come from a post‐modernist air du temps: youth apathy, individualism, democratic societies’ crisis . . . In accordance with the scientific questioning about the contemporary processes of political communication, I propose an alternative set of explanations focused on the spirit and practices which rule French academic boards. I assume that the development and improvement of student participation are also limited by endogenous factors that are closely linked with the functioning of the academic boards. I propose an ethnographic analysis of a French university board. I compare the elected students’ absenteeism to the others members’ (teachers, staff members and guests) attendance rates. Then I study the cultural patterns which structure the interactions. Discursive freedom would be the sine qua non condition of academic autonomy and the structural explanation of weak student participation by teachers.     

The role of discursive resources in science talk

Tao, Oliver, and Venville’s paper addresses a debate between two hypotheses of children’s development of conceptual understandings of the Earth. The authors aim to investigate whether culture influences students’ conceptions of the Earth. However, one questionable assumption shared among conception and conceptual change studies is that researchers can identify children’s mental models, through their discourse, to explain their conceptions of scientific phenomena. In this commentary, I challenge this assumption by looking closely at various interview data and examining different dimensions of interview discourse about the Earth. Based on my findings, I suggest that instead of seeing science talk as representations of mental models, we look at children’s science talk as discursive practices mediated by the immediate social situation and the broader social milieu.     

The use and misuse of pleasure in sex education curricula

Since Michelle Fine's writing on the missing discourse of desire in sex education, there has been considerable prompting among sexuality educators and feminist scholars to incorporate talk of pleasure into sex education curricula. While the calls for inclusion continue, few have actually examined the curricula for a pleasure discourse or explored how it is contextualised within sex education curricula. In this paper, we analysed curricula used in the USA in the past decade. A qualitative thematic analysis revealed that the discourse around pleasurable sex was often linked to a range of dangerous or negative outcomes including not using condoms, rushing into sex without thinking, regretted sex, and pregnancy or STDs. When the discourse around pleasure was included in sections on ‘knowing one's body’, this discourse took a medicalised, scientific tone. Pleasurable sex was also presented in more positive ways, either linked to marriage in Abstinence Only Until Marriage curricula, or within a more feminist discourse about female pleasure in comprehensive sex education curricula. Our research indicates that a discourse of desire is not missing, but that this discourse was often situated as part of a discourse on safe practice and there, continues to equate pleasure with danger.     

Reactions to Bennett: Towards a more rational debate

This paper expresses a concern about the extent to which the manipulation of the language in which we are now expected to talk about education is being used to manipulate the ways in which we think about education, and the degree to which, as a result, a number of important developments in our approach to educational practice are being lost. It focuses on the features of the new discourse which has been established as part of the process of implementing new policies for education in England and Wales and argues the need for the teaching profession to reestablish its own discourse in order to resurrect a genuine debate about educational policies and practices.