Broadening our lenses of perception to advance learning: An introduction to multilectics

In Broadening our lenses of perception, I address the need to assess students through multiple lenses rather than through the dominant lens of standardized tests. I propose what I call multilectical lenses to provide multidimensional pictures of poor students of color; these highlight student skills and knowledge that tests disregard. Multilectics employs multi level analysis, sound and images to analyze the gestures and voices of students during classroom activities. In combination with student writing, the data produced by multilectical practice provide a rich foundation for advancing the academic achievement of our most underserved students.     

A rose in a mirror

In this paper I reflect on the idea of a person as constructed through their actions, in science and otherwise, and the role of the teacher in enabling such action. I write, drawing on my own history in science and the imaging technologies in which I am presently involved, about how these shape the work I do with children and teachers in schools. I purposely try to make the science I do with children reflect the science I did as a scientist and it is in this context that the children act. This environment is illustrated in two stories. In the first the children are looking at lenses and discussing their qualities and the things they are able to see as they gaze through them. This conversation illuminates both the qualities of lenses, the role of the observer, and of the act of seeing. In the second story I argue that the, way I shape the classroom is in effect a lens through which we can view children. What we see through such a lens has the same qualities as the things the children and I talk about in the first story and such visions both shape and are shaped by my actions as a teacher.     

The promise of ritual: a lens for understanding persistent practices in mathematics classrooms

In this article, I propose ritual as an analytic lens for understanding the persistence of practices in contemporary mathematics classrooms. By foregrounding the cultural nature of the teaching and learning of mathematics in schools, ritual analysis can provide insight about the causes and effects of practices that persist through rounds of “reform.” I begin by considering the legacy of the notion of culture in mathematics education research. I then provide examples of ritual analysis in education research and in mathematics education research. I draw on the scholarship of Quantz (2011) as I articulate a working definition of ritual for use in mathematics education research, considering how this definition may help raise and answer distinct questions apart from more familiar constructs. I list some well-known problems and dilemmas in mathematics education that may be promising domains for a ritual analysis, and I conclude by positioning ritual alongside other constructs and methods that are in use in mathematics education research today.     

Distributed Cognition as a Lens to Understand the Effects of Scaffolds: The Role of Transfer of Responsibility

Problem solving is an important skill in the knowledge economy. Research indicates that the development of problem solving skills works better in the context of instructional approaches centered on real-world problems. But students need scaffolding to be successful in such instruction. In this paper I present a conceptual framework for understanding the effects of scaffolding. First, I discuss the ultimate goal of scaffolding—the transfer of responsibility—and one way that scholars have conceptualized promoting this outcome (fading). Next, I describe an alternative way to conceptualize transfer of responsibility through the lens of distributed cognition and discuss how this lens informs how to promote transfer of responsibility. Then I propose guidelines for the creation of problem solving scaffolds to support transfer of responsibility and discuss them in light of the literature.     

Biopolitical Utopianism in Educational Theory

In this paper I shift the center of utopian debates away from questions of ideology towards the question of power. As a new point of departure, I analyze Foucault's notion of biopower as well as Hardt and Negri's theory of biopolitics. Arguing for a new hermeneutic of biopolitics in education, I then apply this lens to evaluate the educational philosophy of John Dewey. In conclusion, the paper suggests that while Hardt and Negri are missing an educational theory, John Dewey is missing a concept of democracy adequate to the biopolitical struggles of the multitude. Thus, I call for a synthesis of Dewey and Hardt and Negri in order to generate a biopedagogical practice beyond both traditional models of education as well as current standardization.     

A love towards a thing eternal: Spinoza and the classroom

There is a growing concern about the struggles of early career teachers and an understandable questioning of the preparation being offered by teacher education courses. Are our preservice teachers being given workable strategies and techniques to allow them to survive the early years? Is it strategies and techniques that are primarily at issue here? Could it be that there is something more fundamental, to do with an underlying philosophical understanding about human nature, the desire to learn and the need to relate? I want to suggest that instruction about strategies and techniques is too often built on an insecure and incompatible foundation of assumptions about the nature of the world of sentient beings and their relationships. Ontology matters. Philosopher Spinoza divided the world of thought into ideas that were adequate – contributing to our well-being, potency and happiness – and those that were inadequate – leading us to feel weak, at the mercy of outside forces, and sad. I want to argue, with Spinoza, that inadequate ontologies lead to a sense of impotence and frustration, and that adequate ideas – a stronger ontology – can underpin and sustain a more durable pedagogy. I explore this idea by looking at some classroom events through a Spinozean lens.     

Bayesian reasoning in avalanche terrain: a theoretical investigation

In this article, I explore a Bayesian approach to avalanche decision-making. I motivate this perspective by highlighting a version of the base-rate fallacy and show that a similar pattern applies to decision-making in avalanche-terrain. I then draw out three theoretical lessons from adopting a Bayesian approach and discuss these lessons critically. Lastly, I highlight a number of challenges for avalanche educators when incorporating the Bayesian perspective in their curriculum.     

Participants' Roles in the Context of a Video Club

This study examines the nature of teacher participation in the context of a video club. Video clubs are professional development meetings in which teachers watch and discuss excerpts of video from their classrooms. In this study, I adopt a situative perspective to examine how teachers develop in their participation to accomplish the goals of the video club. In particular, I examine the roles participants play and explore teachers' participation in four roles that correspond with key goals of the video club. Analysis revealed that teachers' participation shifted in qualitatively different ways over time, with the teachers coming to prompt the group to discuss student mathematical thinking, to propose a variety of interpretations of student ideas, to build on one another's ideas, and to challenge one another's thinking in order to advance the group's conversations. This analysis suggests that the group learned how to participate in roles central to accomplishing the goals of the video club. Studying teacher learning through a lens of participation provides insight into the ways in which teachers coordinate themselves to engage with the goals of professional development and has implications for designing professional development that helps teachers develop practices for teaching mathematics for understanding.     

Negotiating Sociolinguistic Borderlands—Native Youth Language Practices in Space,Time, and Place

Drawing on the work of Philip Deloria (2004) and recent explorations of “American Indian languages in unexpected places” (Webster & Peterson, 2011a), this article challenges received expectations of Native American languages and language users as “rural” and physically distant and of “urban” Indigenous language practices as anomalous. With a focus on Native American youth, I develop the notion of sociolinguistic borderlands—spatial, temporal, and ideological spaces of sociolinguistic hybridity and diversity—as a lens into the grounded realities of language in the lives of contemporary Native youth. The article first contextualizes the current situation of Native American languages and language users within dynamic linguistic ecologies, then presents 4 ethnographic vignettes that illustrate the ways in which youth use their knowledge and claims to heritage languages to negotiate, cross, and occupy sociolinguistic borderlands. I conclude by suggesting the ways in which language planners and educators can reorganize received expectations about youth language practices and ideologies, thereby opening new possibilities for Indigenous language reclamation and youth self-empowerment.     

Unsilencing voices: a study of zoo signs and their language of authority

Zoo signs are important for informal learning, but their effect on visitor perception of animals has been sparsely studied. Other studies have established the importance of informal learning in American society; this study discusses zoo signs in the context of such learning. Through the lens of Critical Theory framed by informal learning, and by applying critical discourse analysis, I discovered subtle institutional power on zoo signs. This may influence visitors through dominant ideological discursive formations and emergent discourse objects, adding to the paradox of “saving” wild animals while simultaneously oppressing them. Signs covering a variety of species from two different United States-accredited zoos were analyzed. Critical Theory looks to emancipate oppressed human populations; here I apply it zoo animals. As physical emancipation is not practical, I define emancipation in the sociological sense—in this case, freedom from silence. Through this research, perhaps we can find a way to represent animals as living beings who have their own lives and voices, by presenting them honestly, with care and compassion.     

From the voice of a ‘socratic gadfly’: a call for more academic activism in the researching of disability in postsecondary education

Abstract

In this article, I use the lens of voices and silences to frame my review of research in the field of disability and postsecondary education. I argue that we need to view research in this field as a necessarily political act that seeks to turn voices of silence into voices of change. Researchers therefore need to rethink their role in order to understand how they can use and direct their political voices. In order to persuade researchers to heed my call for more academic activism, adopt the role of a ‘socratic gadfly’ to identify six political areas of research where I argue that voices and silences need more critical examination. In discussing these six areas, I hope to illuminate the implications for ‘genuinely investigative’ research in the future.     

Teaching students to think critically about science and origins

In David Long’s article, Scientists at Play in a Field of the Lord, he studies the discourse between a network of regional scientists, atheists, activists and evolutionists at the opening of The Creation Museum on Memorial Day, 2007. This review essay examines the teaching of evolution through the teacher’s ‘lens of empathy’ and also considers a ‘pupil centeredness’ approach. As a practicing science educator, I have found it paramount to take into consideration my students’ backgrounds and their families’ beliefs in order to understand their preconceived notions about the origins of life. By teaching evolution as ‘a theory with both facts and fallacies’ only then does it become an opportunity for critical thinking that fosters growth and risk taking in a safe environment. Most times students hear evolution preached as a one-sided lecture by teachers who believe it’s “my way or the highway” and leave little or no room for dialogue. I believe that a teacher’s job is to stay updated with current research on the theory of evolution and then present all the information to students in a way that creates personal opportunities for them to adjust their existing schema without demeaning them, their ideas, or their faith or belief system. This not only shows value, compassion and tolerance for them as thinking humans, but also allows them opportunities to develop critical thinking, which helps to shape whom they become as adults.     

Research and the ambiguity of reflexivity and ethical practice

This paper examines the methodological dilemmas associated with analytical framing as an aspect of the research process. Doing qualitative research potentially changes a researcher – changes their sense of self, who they think they are, who they want to become. The paper examines the ethical dilemma of what that change might mean – for the project, the researcher and the participants. Would respondents be so open if they were that aware the research(er) potentially could change during the performance of the research project? What are the implications, if any, of engaging respondents with the intention of telling their story as a narrative inquiry, then analysing the data through a feminist post-structuralist lens? How does a researcher honour the perspectives of the participants, while simultaneously bringing to bear the critique and understanding provided by employing a post-structuralist lens? The paper pays particular attention to the interactive interview, as it generated possibilities for a researcher to establish a level of trust and rapport such that (emotional) stories could be heard and then later, represented as interpretations of the researcher.     

The subjectivities of ‘included’ students with disabilities in schools

The contextual precept of this paper is to re-theorise inclusive education beyond technical rational solutions to the ‘problem’ of disability. Drawing on Foucauldian and critical disability theories, I make the case for the analysis of inclusive schooling through the lens of students’ ‘included’ subjectivities – notwithstanding the presence of diagnosed special educational needs. I contend that there is a theoretical mismatch between humanist inclusive schooling and the posthumanist position of disability: an epistemic fissure that impedes inclusive development. Through analysis of the voices of students with disabilities from two different schooling contexts in Australia and Spain, I demonstrate how fragmented virtues of normalcy suffused their subjectivities. I conclude the paper with a discussion of the roles that DisHuman disability studies might play in recasting inclusive schooling by troubling normative discourse.     

Practicing What We Preach in Teacher Education: A Critical Whiteness Studies Analysis of Experiential Education

In this article I problematize the reasons for and methods through which I incorporated an opportunity for experiential learning, via a Community Inquiry Project, into my own teaching. I take the stance of a teacher-researcher to closely analyze the specific documents and tasks used to introduce pre-service teachers to the project. I draw on sociocultural approaches to teacher development and literature on experiential education in teacher education to provide a background for the project and the self-study and offer critical whiteness studies as an appropriate lens through which to analyze the various elements of the project. Findings from this study suggest that the project limited the pre-service teachers’ characterizations of community, understandings of sociocultural approaches to learning, relationships to the community, and perceptions of the role of community in teaching. I draw on these findings to suggest that teacher educators share their reflective practices with their students and learn about the diverse experiences of the pre-service teachers themselves to better prepare them to inquire into and draw on knowledge of communities as they work with diverse populations of students.     

Challenges in Enacting Core Practices in Language Teacher Education: A Self-Study

In this study, I explore my practices as a teacher educator in one course both before and after returning to the K–12 classroom to teach secondary language learners for one academic year. By examining the intersection of self-study and practice-based teacher education, I illustrate how I used self-study as a mechanism for innovation and change and focus on the challenges I encountered in implementing the use of practice-based education in my work as a teacher educator. Qualitative data analysis revealed that in redesigning my approach to my course, I stopped short of my goals to make the course more practice-centered. Although I provided students with many opportunities to practice planning, I did not provide enough focused opportunities to practice implementation and to participate in giving and receiving feedback. I learned that engaging teachers in practice-based teaching requires teacher educators to be both specific and deliberate in setting their own purposes for establishing the centrality of practice in their courses and to explain these clearly to teacher candidates. Further work in which teacher educators study their use of practice-based pedagogy would benefit from using a self-study lens. Other researchers are urged to add to the limited body of research about the use of practice-based pedagogy with teachers of language learners, particularly English language learners.     

On the road to reform: a sociocultural interpretation of reform

In this paper I discuss how reform in science education is interpreted by Barma as she recounts the story of Catherine, a grade 9 biology teacher, who reforms her teaching practices in response to a national curriculum reform in Quebec, Canada. Unlike some cases in response to reform, this case is hopeful and positive. Also in this paper, I address some familiar areas that must be considered when teachers undertake curriculum reform and how science educators may fulfill the role of facilitator and advocate in the support of teachers on the road to reform. The commentary focuses on how Barma retells the story through the lens of activity theory.     

Stuck on convention: a story of derivative relationships

In this article, we explore the responses of a group of undergraduate mathematics students to tasks that deal with areas, perimeters, volumes, and derivatives. The tasks challenge the conventional representations of formulas that students are used to from their schooling. Our analysis attends to the specific mathematical ideas and ways of reasoning raised by students, which supported or hindered their appreciation of an unconventional representation. We identify themes that emerged in these responses and analyze those via different theoretical lenses—the lens of transfer and the lens of aesthetics. We conclude with pedagogical recommendations to help learners appreciate the structure of mathematics and challenge the resilience of certain conventions.     

Student trajectories in physics: the need for analysis through a socio-cultural lens

An analysis of student connections through time and space relative to the core discipline of physics is attempted, as viewed through the lens of actor-network-theory, by Antonia Candela. Using lenses of cultural realities, networks, and perceived power in the discourse of one specific university in the capital city of Mexico and one undergraduate physics classroom, the trajectories and itineraries of students are analyzed, relative to a physics professor’s pedagogical practices. This ethnographic study then yields comparisons between Mexican undergraduate students and students from the United States. Actor network theory recognizes that the symbiotic relationship existing between an actor and a continuum of space and time is defined by the symbiotic yet interdependent relationships and networks of practice (Lemke in Downward causation: Minds, bodies, and matter 2000). As part of this study and in line with actor-network-theory, human actors and non-human participants were viewed in relation to how subjects acted and were acted upon within networks of practice. Through this forum I reflect on this work with particular focus on the issues of situatedness of actors from a sociocultural perspective and how established networks viewed within this perspective frame and subsequently impact student trajectories and itineraries. In essence I argue for a need to look at a myriad of further complexities driving the symbiotic relationships being analyzed.