‘Being in the World’: The event of learning

This paper employs an eclectic mix of paradigms in order to discuss constituting characteristics of young children's learning experiences. Drawing upon a phenomenological perspective it examines learning as a form of ‘Being’ and as the result of learners’ engagement with the world in their own, unique, intentional manners. The learners’ intentions towards their world are expressed in everyday activity and participation. A social constructivist perspective is thus employed to present learning as situated in meaningful socio‐cultural contexts of the everyday, lived world and as a form of participation in those settings. These characteristics of learning are brought together into a holistic, synthesised model, a Gestalt of learning. The proposed synthesis has relevance for and is applicable to educational contexts as a means of making sense of children's learning experiences and of promoting and facilitating them.     

LEARNERS' EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHIC RESPONSES TO ENCOUNTERS WITH LEARNING SUPPORT IN FURTHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING

ABSTRACT:   This article investigates the experience of individual learners who have been allocated learning support in the further education system in England. The particular focus is on interviewees' constructions of their emotional and psychic experiences. Through the adoption of a psycho-social perspective, learners' tendency to 'idealise' their learning support workers is understood as a strategy for coping with the anxiety generated by a range of previous experiences. The implications for policy-makers are discussed.     

Parent-child participation in planning children's activities outside of school in European American and Latino families

This longitudinal research used a sociocultural perspective to examine planning competence in the everyday experiences of European American and Latino children from 7 to 9 years of age. Data on children's participation in planning their activities outside of school, parental expectations about children's planning competence, and children's planning in the classroom were collected yearly from Grades 2 to 4 from 140 children and their mothers, and the children's teachers. Results indicate that decision-making practices and parental expectations change with development and vary by ethnicity. Decision making at home was related to children's classroom planning; however, the nature of these relations changed over middle childhood. Results are discussed in terms of cultural and parental contributions to the development of planning skills.     

新课程经验化与学习环境建构

新一轮的课程改革凸显课程经验化的问题。学习者天然的学习本性、儿童学习发生的内在要求、人类心理生命结构关联性、学习方式活动化等要求我们实现课程经验化。在课程开发过程中儿童与课程的关系将体现为儿童与环境的关系。将内容转化为环境中的条件,使课程成为环境的组成部分,建构出“经验世界”的环境条件,这是儿童获取学习经验的主要渠道。     

To know or not to know – mathematics, that is a question of context

As one of the so-called basic skills, 'mathematics' or 'numeracy' is at the top of the list of subjects in adult education programmes. Together with political investment in general and further education, practitioners and theoreticians focus on 'knowing and learning in different contexts'. Jean Lave's theory about 'situated learning' may be regarded as a confrontation with the idea of learning as acquisition of propositional knowledge. One characteristic of adult education in mathematics is that the participants bring with them adult life experience from their everyday and work. Another characteristic is their perspective in educating themselves. There is an apparent contradiction between many adults being blocked in relation to mathematics in formal settings and being competent in their everyday life. It is possible to make sense of this contradiction by analytically expanding the context for knowing and learning mathematics from the participants' experiences and perspectives to also include the adults' dispositions, cf. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of 'habitus' as a guiding principle for practice. By interpreting the account of her life by a 75 year old woman concerning her attitudes to mathematics, the author illustrates and discusses the two analytical concepts ('situated learning' and 'habitus') and their suitability for analysing adults knowing or not-knowing mathematics in different situation contexts. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

论学习信念的形成

学习者通过学习的实践活动,不仅获得了具体的知识、技能,也形成了自己的学习信念。这些学习信念可能是外显的,也可能是内隐的;可能是系统性的,也可能是无系统的,各种信念之间虽然是矛盾的,却是学习者学习的社会实践活动在头脑中的反映,是活动、教育和文化背景共同作用的产物,不仅受个体本身因素(如学习和活动经验、认知发展水平)的影响,而且受个体所处环境(如家庭、学校和社会文化)的影响,这些因素相互作用,共同影响了学习者对学习信念的形成和发展。     

Trajectories in teacher education: Recognising prior learning in practice

This article analyses the trajectories into teacher education of a group of child minders who are studying to become pre-school teachers. The specific focus is what impact their prior experiences and learning from pre-school have on their trajectories, and how these experiences and learning are recognised in the first year of teacher education. A situated learning perspective is applied, with a focus on participation and trajectories in the two communities of practice in which teacher education is situated – the university and the pre-school. The data consist of transcribed interviews with ten student teachers, and additional data are gathered from stakeholders in the program. The results show that prior experiences and learning are given implicit and indirect recognition. In the practice of the pre-school, the trajectory means a shift in identity, from child minder to student teacher and pre-school teacher. In the practice of the university, prior experiences and learning help students in their trajectories from peripheral to fuller participation.     

英语专业语法多媒体课件开发与设计初探

建构主义的知识观、学习观、学生观、师生角色的定位及作用、学习环境和教学原则等理论对教与学给予了新的诠释,为现代多媒体环境下的英语教和学提供了新的模式和视角。把建构主义学习理论、外显知识和内隐知识理论和学习层次理论应用于指导语法多媒体课件的开发与课堂教学有重要的实践价值。通过多维语境、视听剪辑以及结构解析等手段改革传统的语法教学,不仅使习得者有目的、有兴趣、主动地学习,从而实现外显知识和内隐知识的有机结合和转化;而且有利于教师更新教育教学观念,改进教学方法,优化课堂教学。     

以建构主义为指导的综合英语教学方法与实践

建构主义理论认为,学习是学习者主动建构意义的过程,它强调学习的主动性、社会性和情境性。在以学生为中心的教学模式中,学生是知识意义的主动建构者,而教师则起组织和指导的作用。在建构主义学习理论的指导下,教师应将支架式教学、抛锚式教学及随机进入教学运用到综合英语教学实践中,从多方面、多角度创设各种有利于学生运用语言的情景,培养学生的自主学习能力,提高其语言运用能力。     

英语体验学习探析

体验学习既是一种学习方式,也是一种动态的学习过程。体验学习是学生认知过程中不可缺少的重要环节之一,也是学生习得英语语言的有效途径。在英语教学中,体验学习具有交互性、亲历性、真实性、生成性和创造性等特性。本文谨就英语教学中的对话性、思维性、探究性等体验学习作些探讨。     

Lifelong learning ecologies in online higher education: Students' engagement in the continuum between formal and informal learning

Lifelong learning opportunities are readily accessible through the hybridization of digital learning contexts—from formal to informal—in today's globally networked knowledge society. As such, expanded learning opportunities generate a continuum of learning contexts and experiences mediated through digital technology. Consequently, there is an urgent need to actively examine the interconnections and complex relations between what is learned in formal university scenarios and the everyday learning that happens outside of the classroom, particularly the informal learning that is afforded through expanded and emerging digital contexts. The current research problem illustrates that expanded and emerging professional development scenarios require new pedagogical designs for empowering lifelong learners to harness the affordances of the web across both formal and informal contexts and practices. This study outlines ways in which students shape their learning ecologies in virtual contexts to support formal academic learning in online higher education. The paper presents qualitative results from a larger mixed methods interpretive case study. The multicase and multisite study examines three fully online graduate programmes in Education and Digital Technology during the 2017–18 academic year, collecting data in the form of online programme documentation, student interviews and online participant observation. Purposeful and criterion sampling were used to select 13 participants across three sites in Spain, the UK and the USA. The study was underpinned by a lifelong learning ecologies theoretical perspective to analyse learning processes across a continuum of practices and contexts. Findings illustrate how students conceive of, as well as how they organize their learning ecologies through a unique configuration of activities, digital resources and networked social support, indicating that academic programmes and teachers have an essential role in empowering student learning ecologies across contexts, recognizing past trajectories and supporting the development of valued disciplinary practices and perspectives across a continuum of learning.     

Citizenship education ‘goes global’: extra-curricular learning in an overseas campus of a British civic university

Active citizenship is increasingly being framed in the context of lifelong and life-wide learning. However, research on young people’s participation in and experience of different forms of civic practice, particularly in informal settings in different sociocultural contexts, is scarce. Consequently, little is known about how these experiences shape their learning about active citizenship, their understanding of the self and their relationship to society. This paper reports findings from a small-scale qualitative research on students’ experiences of participation in extra-curricular activities (ECAs) in a UK Transnational Higher Education institution in China, in relation to the development of active citizenship and lifelong learning capacity. The findings suggest ECAs can provide opportunities for students to accumulate knowledge and develop skills, attitudes and values that underpin the promotion of active citizenship, while developing habits and skills essential for lifelong learning.     

Science, Art, and Experience: Constructing a Science Pedagogy From Dewey’s Aesthetics

Drawing on the work of Dewey, we present a view of science education from the perspective of art and aesthetics. This perspective places a transformative, aesthetic experience at the forefront of educational objectives. Such experience involves the application of learning in everyday contexts, expansion of perception, and development of an increased interest in science ideas and aspects of the world illuminated by those ideas. We present a pedagogical model focused on fostering transformative, aesthetic experiences. This model involves two general categories of instructional methods: (a) methods of crafting ideas out of concepts, and (b) methods of modeling and scaffolding transformative, aesthetic experiences. We discuss how the methods comprising this pedagogical model relate to established science education methods.     

通过合作学习方式开发与利用成人学习者自身的资源优势

合作学习作为一种有效的交互手段,应用到远程教学实践,能够激发学习兴趣,维持学习动机,形成合作学习的良好氛围,促进学习者合作技能的发展。根据我国远程成人学习者的特点和自身具有的资源优势,可通过合作学习方式开发与利用成人学习者自身的资源优势,提高远程教育教学质量,达到良好的教学效果。     

合作学习方法在课堂教学中的有效应用

合作学习能形成和改变学习的学习态度，增进合作学习技能，并创立紧密结合与整合学习为一体的学习方式，从而发展学习批判性思维、推理及解决问题的能力。     

Facilitating Preschool Learning and Movement through Dance

A preschool movement through dance program is a way to open the door to numerous cultural benefits and opportunities, and preschool skill facilitation. Creating new contexts for learning enrich young children and offer them different opportunities to understand and negotiate the world. Inclusive curricular integration and parent and community participation are important components of a cultural arts experience that deepen the children’s repertoire of behavior and responses to the world. Early childhood education practitioners are encouraged to creatively explore their community and develop rich cultural learning experiences for children.     

An individual learning journey: learning as becoming a vocational teacher

In this paper, I address a perceived gap in the lifelong learning literature. There is very little research which addresses how learning should be construed, when individuals transition across a longitudinal span of their working life. This transition which could be viewed as a process of ‘becoming somebody’, often oversimplifies the full complexity of individuals’ learning experiences. Using a sociocultural perspective, the paper explores the lived experiences of individuals in the process of becoming a vocational teacher, in order to help conceptualise the individuals’ learning through their working life. The study draws upon data from a completed research on a group of vocational education trainee teachers learning to teach. This paper argues that learning varies significantly from individual to individual, time to time, context to context and also in different stages of individuals’ lives. This transition could be viewed as an individual learning journey, through understanding the interrelationship between individuals and the contexts, across the individuals’ lives. Drawing from this understanding, the individual’s agency is presented as a way that individuals construct their own lifecourse through the actions and choices they made within the opportunities and constraints of the context. The findings of the study also contribute to the understanding of changes, from the individual learner’s perspective, which could be useful for policy and practice relating to lifelong learning.     

情感因素与儿童外语学习

情感因素是影响儿童外语学习的最重要的因素。儿童的学习动机、焦虑和自尊直接影响着外语学习的成功与否；而社会环境与学校环境又左右着儿童的不同情感的形成。借用人本主义教学理念，引导帮助儿童发展健康情感．是儿童外语教学活动成功的重要保证。     

远程学习者学习状态探微

远程学习者的学习状态既包括学生从事学习活动前的学习准备状态,也包括学生从事学习活动中的学习心理状态和学习环境状态,还包括学生从事学习活动后的学习达成状态.远程学习者的学习状态具有可变性与相对稳定性、内隐性与外显性、共同性与个体差异性、主动性与被动性、主观性与客观性等特点.这些特点表明远程学习者的学习状态是可调节的,可以从动力结构和支持结构两方面优化学生的学习心理状态和学习环境状态,具体的优化策略有:激发学生的学习热情,增强学习的内动力;充分发挥教师的助学作用;建立有效的学习监控机制等.