Epistemological antecedents to culturally relevant and constructivist classroom curricula: A longitudinal study of teachers' contrasting world views

This study explored how teachers' prior experiences, beliefs about knowledge, and schooling contexts collectively influenced their ability to implement classroom curricula that were culturally relevant to their students and that were constructivist in orientation. Using a case study design, this paper presents a 4-year longitudinal study of Dan, a second-career teacher who entered teaching after being a field scientist for an international corporation for 6 years, and Amy, who became an English teacher after being a floral designer for 10 years. Using the theoretical perspective of world view as described by Shuell (1992) [Teaching and Teacher Education, 8(1), 83–90] and Cobern (1993) [The practice of constructivism in science education, Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science], I explored the professional development of Dan and Amy, who differed in their world views. Specifically, I examined how their world views gave shape to their classroom learning environments, including their classroom curricula and their interactions with students during their initial years of becoming teachers. Multiple sources of data were gathered throughout the 4 year study from formal and informal interviews, observations of classroom teaching, stimulated recall interviews, and biographical interviews. Using the constant comparative method of data analysis, salient themes emerged from the data, including beliefs about teaching content knowledge, beliefs about learners, and influences on classroom curriculum. Implications for creating constructivist and culturally relevant classroom curricula are discussed.     

Pre-service teacher perspectives on the importance of global education: world and classroom views

In an era of international multimedia exposure and a global economy, there is no question that global education (GE) must be part of the school curriculum. Effective delivery of GE is reliant on adequate teacher preparation. A group of teacher educators at one University sought to raise the profile of GE with pre-service teachers through the integration of global perspectives in various courses. This paper explores pre-service teacher perceptions of the importance of GE and their learning as a result of this emphasis. Additionally, pre-service teacher preferences for further learning about GE are examined. It is apparent that pre-service teachers are interested in GE, especially in terms of how they can incorporate it in their teaching and, with exposure over a number of semesters student understandings develop, creating better prepared teachers of GE. Not surprisingly, these students were primarily focused on their future classroom practices rather than their role in the world more generally. Additionally, it was clearly evident that unique GE approaches were linked to specific teaching disciplines, an indication that GE continues to be a difficult concept to incorporate without explicit guidance for integration, something not always easy in a university setting.     

邓小平对马克思主义世界历史理论的实践诠释

马克思主义世界历史理论作为马克思主义理论的重要组成部分,有着独特的出场逻辑,它源于哲学意义上的革命性批判,成于对现代性及其趋势的理论阐释,升华为社会主义和共产主义的理论学说;邓小平从中国社会主义现代化建设的具体实际出发,实现了对马克思主义世界历史理论"三位一体"的实践诠释.并实现了对它的实践性超越,由此形成了社会主义本质论、社会主义市场经济论、改革开放论、小康社会建设论、和平与发展的时代主题论以及社会主义初级阶段论等等.     

Parent role characteristics: Parent views and their implications for school psychologists.

This research examined the parent role as perceived by a large number of parents of school-age children in New Hampshire. The results reveal that these parents readily describe a parent role using the same characteristics that emerge from the research literature. More importantly, the subjects consider each of the six parent role characteristics as differentially important at different stages in children's development. The implications of this research for school psychologists are many, including, for instance, assessment, consultation, and intervention.     

Educational Research and Policy: Epistemological Considerations

This article is centrally concerned with the sort of knowledge that can and should inform educational policy—and it treats this as an epistemological question. It distinguishes this question from the more extensively explored question of what sort of knowledge in what form policy‐makers do in fact commonly take into account. The article examines the logical and rhetorical character of policy and the components of policy decisions and argues that policy demands a much wider range of information than research typically provides. Either the research task or commission has to be substantially extended or the gap will be filled by information or thinking that is not derived from research. One of the gaps between research of an empirical kind and policy is the normative gap. In the final section the article points to the inescapably normative character of educational policy. Of course the values that inform policy can be investigated empirically, but this kind of enquiry cannot tell us what we should do. There is a role for research/scholarship and more rather than less intelligent and critical argumentation in addressing these normative questions as well as the empirical questions that underpin policy.     

Motivation of adults: implications of adult learning theories for distance education

This paper attempts to address the problem of motivating adults, particularly but not only in the context of distance teaching. Its approach is needs based, in that it identifies in some detail the needs and interests of adults, due to an acceptance of a viewpoint promoted constantly in adult learning theories – that effective learning should be based on the needs and interest characteristics of the adult learner.

Thus this paper will attempt to: review the general principles of adult learning; describe in detail the nature of the adult learner; as suggested by current literature; provide suggestions for the design of learning programmes for adults; review some implications for tertiary colleges and their staff, particularly those engaged in correspondence teaching, of accepting ideas about motivation derived from adult learning theories.     

素质教育认识论的误区及其超越

2006年新修订的《中华人民共和国义务教育法》颁布以后,素质教育作为一种政策理念已经以法律的形式规定下来,这必将有利于增强"素质教育"作为一种语词象征符号的合法性地位,坚定我国政府、学校与社会实施素质教育的意志与信念,扩大人们对于素质教育的关注与讨论范围,促进素质教育的全面实施与发展。素质教育在当前兼具政策语体与科学语体双重特征。在全面推进素质教育改革的过程中深入持久地开展对素质教育问题的讨论不仅具有非常重要的理论意义,而且也具有非常重要的现实意义。素质教育与应试教育之间并非是一种简单的对立与否定关系。为进一步提高素质教育改革的合理性与有效性,必须克服以下四种错误认识:其一,把素质教育理解成为一种取消考试的教育;其二,把素质教育理解成为一种以技能培养取向为主的才艺教育;其三,把素质教育理解成为一种急功近利的工具性教育;其四,把素质教育理解成为一种无约束的自由教育。     

韩愈的教学思想及其对现代教学的启示

本论述了韩愈教学思想中两个方面的内容，一是论尊师重道，二是论如何治学，从对这两方面内容的阐述中，提取韩愈教学思想中的精华部分为现代教学所用，即现代教师要道在先、博采众长、创造良好的师生关系，不仅要完成道、授业、解惑的任务，而且要更好地其主导作用，为国家培养更多的人才。治学要刻苦勤奋、学而不厌、既博又精，而且要创造性，做到学思结合、推陈出新，才能成为21世纪需要的创造性人才。     

Traditional occupations in a modern world: implications for career guidance and livelihood planning

This article is an attempt to examine the place and significance of traditional occupations as careers in today’s world. The areas of tension and compatibility between ideas and values that signify modernity and the practice of traditional occupations are reviewed. The meaning of “traditional occupations” is unravelled, the potential that traditional occupations in agriculture and crafts offer for building inclusive and sustainable societies is explored, and attention is drawn to the implications of such potential for career guidance practice.     

First-year engineering students' views of the nature of engineering: implications for engineering programmes

A study was conducted on the views of the nature of engineering held by 114 first-year engineering majors; the study built on prior work on views of the nature of science held by students, their instructors, and the general public. Open-coding analysis of responses to a 12-item questionnaire suggested that the participants held tacit beliefs that engineering (1) involves problem solving; (2) is a form of applied science; (3) involves the design of artefacts or systems; (4) is subject to various constraints; and (5) requires teamwork. These beliefs, however, were often unsophisticated, and significant aspects of the field of engineering as described in the literature on engineering practices were missing from the student responses. The results of this study are important because students' beliefs have a strong influence on what they value in a classroom situation, what they attend to in class, and how they choose to study for a course.     

Muslim cosmopolitanisms in a transnational world: implications for the education of Muslims

ABSTRACT

In a transnational world, Muslim cosmopolitanisms are both numerous and diverse. These cosmopolitanisms constitute a broad spectrum of views and practices, representing a range of interpretations and expressions of Islam, some of which are polarized and polarizing. In this reflective, theoretical paper, I discuss the potential implications of Muslim cosmopolitanisms for the education of Muslims in a transnational world and argue that the teachings of Islam are sufficiently open to interpretation to support various Muslim cosmopolitanisms. While resistance to change has typified the education of Muslims historically in many parts of the world, this resistance is being challenged in new ways, characteristic of the Information Age, wherein near-instantaneous, transnational exchanges of information and ideas are democratizing and adding complexity to Islamic hermeneutics and praxis. In this context, I contend that Muslim cosmopolitan discourses have become necessary, and the outcomes of these discourses will be crucial in shaping the future education of Muslims. Given historical precedents, however, I posit that the triumph of Muslim educational orthodoxy is expected if these discourses lead to or reinforce polarization.     

Relating GTE and Knowledge-based Courseware Engineering: Some Epistemological Issues

The GTE approach to create instruction, as described by Van Marcke, is related with courseware authoring. ITS-approaches such as GTE and conventional courseware authoring may seem diametrical approaches to the generation of instruction. Authoring, if carried out in a principled, systematic, and method-supported way has been called Courseware Engineering. In research on Courseware Engineering the two authors have attempted to extend Courseware Engineering into Knowledge-based Courseware Engineering. This approach to authoring has much in common with GTE. They concern the application of knowledge-based methods and techniques for the generation of instruction. There are basic differences in viewpoints though and an epistemological analysis is applied in order to make correspondences and differences with respect to shared problem issues visible. The analysis shows that from a technical point of view a symbiosis of both approaches might be feasible and worthwhile to attempt. Differences in vision on the role of the human in authoring remain though.     

Preservice teachers’ views of global citizenship and implications for global citizenship education

Global citizenship (GC) is becoming increasingly significant as a desirable graduate attribute in the context of increasing globalisation and cultural diversity. However, both the means and ends of GC education are influenced by a divergent range of conceptualizations. The aim of this research project was to investigate preservice teachers’ understandings of global citizenship, with a particular focus on cultural diversity. Pre-service teachers (PSTs) participated in interviews, and findings indicated that they were uncertain about the idea of global citizenship, sought harmony and a desire for sameness in culturally diverse relationships, and held ethnocentric, paternalistic and salvationist views about the ‘Other’. Drawing on these findings, we present a framework incorporating technicist, humanistic and postcritical conceptions as a tool for analysis of GCE approaches, their means and ends.     

A Sociologist Teaches History: Some Epistemological and Pedagogical Reflections

This article discusses the concept of historical sociology in relation to the teaching of a module on an undergraduate degree in Education Studies at a university in the United Kingdom. The module examines the history of education policy in England from 1870 until the present day. Drawing upon comparisons with Social Foundations of Education programs in the United States, I examine some key epistemological and pedagogical issues raised by the interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning followed within the module in which we combine historical and sociological perspectives as a means to understand the evolution of the English education system. In particular, using Bernstein's concept of the pedagogic device as an analytical framework, I consider the epistemological congruence of sociology and history as the contributory disciplines of the undergraduate module. From a discussion of the concept of historical sociology, I conclude that although sociology and history are distinct subjects, they share a large amount of analytical ground that thus facilitates the interdisciplinary approach pursued within the module. Following that, I examine some pedagogical issues that have arisen in my experience of teaching upon the module and I discuss how I have addressed these. I conclude the article by making comparisons to relevant examples from pedagogical practices in Social Foundations of Education programs in the United States.     

科学预测:可持续发展的认识论前提

可持续发展的提出，本身就是科学预测后的反思结果。科学预测与可持续发展在本质上是一致的，科学预测是可持续发展的认识论、方法论前提?科学预测能力的增强确证了人的本质力量，是实现可持续发展的保障。     

Parental views of morality and sexuality and the implications for South African moral education

Discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is prohibited in South Africa. Against legal gains, however, are marked increases in homophobic violence. Schools are deeply implicated in the development of a moral education premised on democracy and sexual equality. This paper sought to examine the ways in which parents situated within diverse social contexts define, regulate and entrench the right to sexual equality, analyzing their implications for moral education in schools. The data were derived through an interview-based study of 17 parents of learners across five secondary schools in two provinces in the country. Hetero-morality was found to be particularly powerful limiting the rights of gays and lesbians. The social and cultural processes through which hetero-morality is upheld reproduce negative outcomes for gays and lesbians. Despite this, the paper finds that parents are capable of engendering support for sexual justice and building alliances with schools to promote a new version of morality. The paper presents further warrant for working with parents in the development of moral education premised upon sexual rights.     

Durkheim and Vygotsky's theories of knowledge and their implications for a critical educational theory

This paper is part of the ongoing work of the author and others in developing a social realist theory of knowledge for educational studies. It contrasts Durkheim and Vygotsky's theories and why both are important for educational theory. It begins by emphasizing the similarities between them; that knowledge has to be understood in terms of its historical development in human societies and that the acquisition of knowledge is the primary goal of formal education. In contrasting the ideas of the two writers the paper develops the distinction between ‘structure’ for Durkheim and ‘activity’ for Vygotsky and explores some of the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. It then examines how the ideas of the two writers have been developed by their leading followers in sociology and psychology‐ giving particular consideration to the work of Basil Bernstein and Yrjo Engestrom. It concludes with some broader issues concerning theories of knowledge in educational studies.