Why a critical pedagogy of place is an oxymoron

Given the growing environmental awareness, educators – especially in science and environmental education – need to avoid embracing a ‘critical pedagogy of place’. Why conflating critical pedagogy with place‐based education is an oxymoron, and why it perpetuates the thinking and silences that undermine both the diversity of the world’s cultures and ecosystems are the main foci of this essay. The main theorists of a critical pedagogy of place – Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and David Gruenewald – draw on a tradition of thinking that emphasizes decolonization and reinhabitation. While these words create the illusion of a culturally and ecologically sound approach to place‐based education, these theorists are unable to recognize the nature and ecological importance of the cultural commons that exist in every community – and that represent alternatives to a consumer‐dependent existence. In effect, their commitment to universalizing the process of decolonization without a deep knowledge of the diverse cultural practices that have a smaller ecological impact meets the definition of an oxymoron where two contradictory positions are assumed to be compatible. A culturally informed knowledge of place takes account of different approaches to dwelling on the land, as well as the ability to listen to the keepers of community memory of past environmentally destructive practices and of sustainable traditions of community self‐sufficiency. It is not driven by a Western ideology that takes for granted the progressive nature of change, or assumes that Western theorists possess the answers that the other cultures should live by.     

Keiyo Cattle Raiding, Kechui Mathematics and Science Education: What do They Have in Common?

In the context of globalization, indigenous educational systems of endangered cultures are faced with extinction. Biologists recognize that biodiversity is dependent upon sustaining and promoting knowledge and values of indigenous cultures. Education researchers have a similar responsibility — to promulgate educational diversity before several thousand years of valuable educational knowledge is extirpated. This paper presents the Keiyo of Kenya who have a rich educational system. Its focus is on an indigenous game, Kechui (using calculations to sharpen your mind), based on cattle raiding, and the Keiyos' use of the game for learning mixed strategy-based probabilistic problem solving. Kechui may also have international potential for teaching probabilistic problem solving in contemporary mathematics and science, especially genetics.     

Using the Environment in Mathematics and Science Teaching: An African and Aboriginal Perspective

A strong case is made in this paper for the effective utilisation of the learner's environment for science and mathematics teaching in African, rural, and Aboriginal societies. Dwelling on the rich cultural heritage of indigenous, traditional, and rural settings, the paper attempts to explain why, and show how this heritage can be advantageously tapped and transferred to modern day mathematics and science classrooms and laboratories. The need for the integration of school science and mathematics with the lived experiences of learners in indigenous cultures where factors such as folklore, myths, legends, and taboos play powerful roles is also discussed. Integrating the environment into school teaching/learning, the paper argues, would contribute to an effective mathematics-science-environment-society interaction. Additionally, the approach could boost enrolment and performance in mathematics and science for students from indigenous cultural backgrounds, many of who shy away from these areas of study in present-day schools.     

Using the Environment in Mathematics and Science Teaching: An African and Aboriginal Perspective

A strong case is made in this paper for the effective utilisation of the learner's environment for science and mathematics teaching in African, rural, and Aboriginal societies. Dwelling on the rich cultural heritage of indigenous, traditional, and rural settings, the paper attempts to explain why, and show how this heritage can be advantageously tapped and transferred to modern day mathematics and science classrooms and laboratories. The need for the integration of school science and mathematics with the lived experiences of learners in indigenous cultures where factors such as folklore, myths, legends, and taboos play powerful roles is also discussed. Integrating the environment into school teaching/learning, the paper argues, would contribute to an effective mathematics-science-environment-society interaction. Additionally, the approach could boost enrolment and performance in mathematics and science for students from indigenous cultural backgrounds, many of who shy away from these areas of study in present-day schools.     

Basic Irony: Examining the Foundations of School Mathematics With Preservice Teachers

This article reports on an inquiry into what tends to be taken for granted with regard to the teaching and learning of mathematics. The inquiry, undertaken in the context of a course on methods for mathematics teaching, was developed around an examination of the mathematical notions that infuse conventional theories of cognition and that permeate the structures and practices of school mathematics. In particular, concepts drawn from or aligned with Euclidean geometry were examined. Specifically, alternatives drawn from fractal geometry were explored. The importance of interrogating the often-transparent figurative underpinnings of our thinking about thinking is highlighted.     

从思维方式角度看翻译中的文化对等

翻译之难在于文化的不同。不同的民族由于其所处的自然环境、历史条件、地理位置以及社会现实的不同,由此而形成的文化具有其特殊性。不同的文化潜移默化地影响着人们的思维方式、情感、语言和行为,从而产生跨文化交际的隔阂及翻译的障碍。因此,在翻译中要做到文化的完全对等是不可能的。从英汉思维方式对各自的语言结构、时空取向及修辞手法三个方面的影响入手,阐述了在英汉互译中如何达到文化的等效。     

非洲文化中的数学与数学课程发展的文化多样性

对于数学课程的研究已经从仅关注学校与书本里的数学转向不同社会文化背景下丰富的日常生活场景。以非洲为例,就可以在日常生活中找到许多与数学课程密切相关的重要内容,因而注重"日常数学"与学校数学课程的关联,考虑数学课程的文化相关性显得意义重大。而若要在数学课程发展中很好地体现文化多样性,则需要作如下思考:理解民族和文化的数学传统与整体经验;充分利用不同文化中的资源;反映学生的学习文化与风格;处理好多样性与统一性;同时能在评价中反映学生的文化体验。     

‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nations’ Implementation of Curriculum Review in Singapore

‘Thinking schools’ will be sites of learning for everyone declared the Singapore Prime Minister, Goh Chok and Minister of Education Teo Chee Hean’s in 1997 also spoke on the model of’ ‘thinking schools, learning nation’. Gardner’s model was used for the thinking school model in Singapore, in order to develop critical and creative thinking in students. This was to be done with the use of instructional technology as an enabling tool using a diversity of approaches including integrated project work. This paper reports on how one school went about changing approaches to teaching and learning by implementing integrated project work as a way of integrating the content areas of the curriculum, mathematics and science through English language, supported by the tools of instructional technology.     

Connected and culturally embedded beliefs: Chinese and US teachers talk about how their students best learn mathematics

This study compares US and Chinese elementary mathematics teachers' beliefs about how students learn mathematics. Interviews with teachers in each country revealed that Chinese and US teachers have distinct ways of thinking about how mathematics should be taught and how students learn. Many Chinese teachers talked about developing students’ interest in mathematics and relating the content of mathematics lessons to real-life situations. The US teachers talked about students' learning styles and using hands-on approaches to learning mathematics. Furthermore, these beliefs may be widespread and persistent within each country because the set of ideas among teachers appear to be internally consistent. Implications for teacher change and the study of teachers' beliefs are discussed.     

Educational Spaces of Cultural Capitalism: The Concept of Consumer Culture as a New Framework for Contemporary Educational Research

This article introduces a specific concept of consumer culture into the international and European discussion about new concepts and categories in comparative education. Basic meanings of consumer culture are presented in reference to consumer research, consumer culture theory, and a revisited concept of world polity. In addition to general reflexions, two educational programs from UNESCO—on sustainable consumption and lifestyles, and on cultural diversity and national cultural heritage—are analyzed to show how education and educational research can benefit from the concept of consumer culture. The article proposes to conceive consumer culture as the educational space of global cultural capitalism.     

Decolonizing methodologies and indigenous knowledge: The role of culture,place and personal experience in professional development

This study reports findings from a 10‐day professional development institute on curricular trends involving 19 secondary mathematics and science teachers and administrators from Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Philippines, the United States, and People's Republic of China. Participants explored the roles of culture, place, and personal experience in science education through writings and group discussions. Initially, Asian participants tended to view indigenous knowledge and practices more negatively than U.S. peers. After a presentation on indigenous Hawaiian practices related to place and sustainability, they evaluated indigenous practices more positively and critiqued the absence of locally relevant science and indigenous knowledge in their national curricula. They identified local issues of traffic, air, and water quality they would like to address, and developed lessons addressing prior knowledge, place, and to a lesser extent, culture. These findings suggested critical professional development employing decolonizing methodologies articulated by indigenous researchers Abbott and Smith has the potential to raise teachers' awareness of the connections among personal and place‐based experiences, cultural practices and values, and teaching and learning. An implication was the development of a framework for professional development able to shift science instruction toward meaningful, culture, place, and problem‐based learning relevant to environmental literacy and sustainability. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 1247–1268, 2007     

Framing Cross-Cultural Ethical Practice in Adapt[ive] Physical Activity

ABSTRACT

Academics and practitioners are often at a loss when it comes to understanding the ethical socio-political and cultural contexts that invade the world of adapted physical activity. Ethical practice is situated in the local and the specific. In this article we highlight the reality that both academics and practitioners need to be ever mindful that the cultures surrounding the education, sport and rehabilitation components of adapted physical activity are distinctive environments that vary across the globe. Because of the cultural diversity surrounding adapted physical activity, we set out an embryonic framework for ethically thinking about practice in our field. Ultimately, we hope that this framework will go some way to illuminate questions of situated ethical importance that are becoming increasing conundrums within adapted physical activity.     

Constructivist Practice in Preservice Teacher Education in Mathematics: (re)producing and affirming the status quo?

Teacher educators often tend to place enormous faith in constructivist approaches to teaching, which emphasise collaboration, inquiry and problem solving. With reference to my own pedagogical practices in preservice teacher education, I argue that constructivist practice may in fact cement, rather than challenge, the taken‐for‐granted cultural, sexist and racist assumptions informing teaching‐mathematics‐as‐usual. I suggest that students should experience a different mathematics; a mathematics that reveals how processes of collaboration and inquiry, based on constructed binaries, selectively constitute mathematical subjectivities. Preservice teachers and teacher educators who are aware of activities and practices which are overly regulatory and/or discriminatory might work together to re‐vision and enact an alternative mathematics: a mathematics able to challenge and disrupt the status quo.     

Parental cultural models and resources for understanding mathematical achievement in culturally diverse school settings

This paper proposes that the theoretical concept of cultural models can offer useful insights into parental involvement in their child??s mathematical achievement and the resources they use to go about gaining information in culturally diverse learning settings. This examination takes place within a cultural-developmental framework and draws on the notion of cultural models to explicate parental understandings of their child??s mathematics achievement and what resources are used to make sense of this. Three parental resources are scrutinized: (a) the teacher, (b) examination test results, and (c) constructions of child development. The interviews with 22 parents revealed some ambiguity around the interpretation of these resources by the parent, which was often the result of incongruent cultural models held between the home and the school. The resources mentioned are often perceived as being unambiguous but show themselves instead to be highly interpretive because of the diversity of cultural models in existence in culturally diverse settings. Parents who are in minority or marginalized positions tend to have difficulties in interpreting cultural models held by school, thereby disempowering them to be parentally involved in the way the school would like.     

解析几何课程中重要数学思想方法探究

解析几何里蕴涵着丰富的数学思想方法,其为数学思想方法的教学提供了一个很好的知识平台。师专数学专业主干课程《解析几何》中的数学思想方法可按核心数学思想方法和一般数学思想方法来划分。     

核心素养下小学生数学空间观念的培养

近年来,越来越多的家长重视对孩子空间思维的培养,空间思维在社会上也受到高度重视。我们知道空间思维需要从小培养,所以在小学,学生就被要求学习图形与几何,小学数学教师要重视对图形与几何这部分知识的教学,以培养学生的空间思维能力。     

高数课程中内容扩展时的更新问题

在高等数学课程中,从平面解析几何扩展到空间解析几何,从一元微积分扩展到多元微积分时,既有量的直接扩展,又全面存在着质的变化,对许多概念、命题、方法需要重新审视,进行改造和更新。就高数课程中多元函数微积分教学的基本思路,笔者进行了一些分析、探讨。     

Representations of indigenous knowledges in secondary school science textbooks in Australia and Canada

In recent years there has been a growing recognition that presenting principally western perspectives in science texts is a form of ethnocentrism, racism or cultural imperialism. In order to address this problem, a number of science texts have appeared which attempt to incorporate greater diversity of knowledge types. This paper employs discourse analysis techniques to examine the approach taken to minority group knowledges in two recently published sets of junior secondary science texts, one used in Australia and the other in Canada, with a specific focus on the incorporation of indigenous knowledges into the texts. An evaluation is provided on the kinds of indigenous knowledges incorporated in the texts and the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches used.     

试析明清时期在弘扬中算和引进西算方面存在的问题

分析了中国在明、清时期,在引进西洋数学和弘扬中国传统数学方面存在的一些问题。如在引进西洋数学时,没有把西洋数学中优秀的思想方法和便于书写的阿拉伯数码全部引进来,而是采用中文数字的竖写形式;在挖掘、整理中国传统数学时,没有把中国数学中好的思想方法,如机械化思想方法进一步发扬和推进。     

文化空缺:跨文化交际失败剖析

在全球化的大背景下,跨文化交往已然渗透到我们生活的方方面面.然而,跨文化交往活动有时会发生交际者始料未及的交际障碍,小至误会,大至冲突.造成这种现象的原因之一即为“文化空缺”,反映了独特的民族文化特质以及文化差异.因此,语言文化的差异是其产生的基础,“文化空缺”是语言文化异质性的集中体现.跨文化交际中的文化空缺有几种类别:语言层面的文化空缺,主要包括能够反映文化内涵差别的词汇;交际层面的文化空缺,主要指能够反映出一个民族与另一个民族在文化结构特征方面的差异,如民族性格、思维方式、价值观、行为规范等;语篇层面的文化空缺,主要指不同文化思维方式的差异导致的语篇组织结构方面的不对应.造成文化空缺的原因有:民族性格、情感等的差异,价值观与思维模式的差异,礼仪禁忌的差异,典籍、典故以及宗教的影响.