High school biology evolution learning experiences in a rural context: a case of and for cultural border crossing

Although the concept of “rural” is difficult to define, rural science education provides the possibility for learning centered upon a strong connection to the local community. Rural American adolescents tend to be more religious than their urban counterparts and less accepting of evolution than their non-rural peers. Because the status and perception of evolutionary theory may be very different within the students’ lifeworlds and the subcultures of the science classroom and science itself, a cultural border crossing metaphor can be applied to evolution teaching and learning. This study examines how a teacher may serve as a cultural border crossing tour guide for students at a rural high school as they explore the concept of biological evolution in their high school biology class. Data collection entailed two formal teacher interviews, field note observations of two biology class periods each day for 16 days during the Evolution unit, individual interviews with 14 students, student evolution acceptance surveys, student evolution content tests, and classroom artifacts. The major findings center upon three themes regarding how this teacher and these students had largely positive evolution learning experiences even as some students continued to reject evolution. First, the teacher strategically positioned himself in two ways: using his unique “local” trusted position in the community and school and taking a position in which he did not personally represent science by instead consistently teaching evolution “according to scientists.” Second, his instruction honored local “rural” funds of knowledge with respect to local knowledge of nature and by treating students’ religious knowledge as a form of local expertise about one set of answers to questions also addressed by evolution. Third, the teacher served as a border crossing “tour guide” by helping students identify how the culture of science and the culture of their lifeworlds may differ with respect to evolutionary theory. Students negotiated the cultural borders for learning evolution in several ways, and different types of border crossings are described. The students respected the teacher’s apparent neutrality, sensitivity toward multiple positions, explicit attention to religion/evolution, and transparency of purposes for teaching evolution. These findings add to the current literature on rural science education by highlighting local funds of knowledge for evolution learning and how rural teachers may help students navigate seemingly hazardous scientific topics. The study’s findings also add to the current evolution education literature by examining how students’ religious perspectives may be respected as a form of expertise about questions of origins by allowing students to examine similarities and differences between scientific and religious approaches to questions of biological origins and change.     

Proximity and policy: negotiating safe spaces between immigration policy and school practice

Policy around the legal status and social rights of the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants is unresolved, making it imperative that PK-12 schools and educators prepare for challenges to undocumented students’ educational access. In 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appeared near an elementary school, which required school personnel to use the space in and around their school to demarcate boundaries to limit the impact of ICE activity on the school community. Critical moral geography is the guiding theoretical construct the authors use to examine the intersection of immigration policy and education in the context of immigration enforcement near a public school. Critical moral theory suggests that “places” are sites where people contest their values and concepts of what is morally correct, engaging in struggles over power. Thinking about space broadly allows for an exploration of how different policies converge and affect the spaces where educators are trying to engage in moral work. The authors conclude that educators can be instrumental in creating safe spaces for undocumented students.     

Exploring the Borderlands: Elementary School Teachers’ Navigation of Immigration Practices in a New Latino Diaspora Community

Drawing primarily on interview data from a 5-year ethnography on the school experiences of Mexican immigrant children in a New Latino Diaspora community, we explore how their teachers understood and responded to increasing deportation-based immigration practices affecting children’s lives. We illustrate how teachers fell along a continuum regarding their desire and success in pushing beyond their comfort zones to create spaces in which they learned from, and built on, students’ immigration experiences. We argue for teacher education that prepares educators to become border crossers who engage with aspects of difference, such as immigration status, that are rarely discussed in schools.     

Border Brokers: Teachers and Undocumented Mexican Students in Search of Acompañamiento

This article examines the deployment of border conocimiento and the subsequent cultural production of third spaces for transnational Mexican youth by Chicano educators who I call “border brokers” at a northern California high school. It examines the micro-level insurgent actions on the part of a small group of educators at Bosque High to engage Mexican migrant youth through a different educational vision and narrative—a vision based on communal notions of learning and belonging and border epistemology, what I call Acompañamiento, where the meaning and scope of membership in the community in which one lives are addressed. Demonstrating a border epistemology, border teachers understood intimately the need to go beyond narrow constructions of academic success to join in the struggle for full realization of their students’ humanity and need to be in community. Using ethnographic data from a year-long study at a northern California high school and town, this paper examines the different ways that educators came together to claim space and create place for displaced transmigrants in what I call acts of acompañamiento—a fluid cultural practice of solidarity, advocacy, and relationship/community building based on cultural knowledge situated in border zones.     

Between “Islamic” and “un-Islamic”: Navigating Religion at an American Islamic High School

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate how one American Islamic school community grapples with external and internal demands on religion, and how this process impacts notions of what is religious. At ‘Ilm High School, an Islamic high school on America’s West Coast, school administrators and teachers must accommodate students’ and parents’ diverse and often competing ideas about Islam and the “Islamic.” In doing so, they sometimes downplay the “Islamic” in their Islamic Studies classes, policies, and school representation. They do this without venturing into the “un-Islamic”, casting a wide “religious net” and keeping Islam capacious and relevant enough for Muslim students.     

Collaborative learning and the construction of common knowledge

In collaborative learning, students not only have to acquire knowledge, they also have to learn to regulate the process of acquiring knowledge. In the traditional classroom, the function of regulation rests with the teacher. In the collaborative classroom, however, the responsibility for learning has in part been handed over to the students. We examine how students, who work as members of a community of learners, construct shared understanding. in particular, we want to explore what interactive and discursive tools students use in their collaboration. We present observations made during a series of innovative mathematics lessons in an 8th grade classroom at a Dutch primary school in which children (between 11 and 13 years of age) worked as “researchers” who were encouraged to formulate questions for exploration and to collaborate in answering them. Both in small group discussions and in discussions involving the whole class, students worked on the construction of arguments and the creation of shared knowledge. The construction and diffusion of knowledge occurred in “cycles of argumentation” to which many children contributed and in which ideas were repeated and elaborated upon. Because, in students’ collaboration, learning is made dependent on proposing and critically discussing arguments, the character of knowledge, acquired under these circumstances, is different from knowledge acquired in a more traditional classroom setting.     

U.S.-Mexico Border Studies Online Collaboration: Transformative Learning Across Power and Privilege

In response to the national conversation about the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration in recent years, we created an online partnership between students in concurrent border studies courses at our two campuses: a public Hispanic-serving institution in South Texas and a private, small liberal arts college in Michigan. We explored whether and how the tensions between privileged and disadvantaged students documented in the traditional classroom would manifest online, and how we could use virtual technologies most effectively to structure transformative learning, defined as recognition and articulation of the structural and cultural systems that frame individual experience and meaning-making, across difference. As we document in this essay, tensions around racial, class, and educational inequality did occur in our partnership. Yet these tensions were crucial in creating the conditions for transformative learning because they generated “disorienting dilemmas” that challenged students’ assumptions and knowledge. Our intentional integration of critical multiculturalist curriculum and pedagogical practices (especially embodied, facilitated online interactions) capitalized upon those conditions. By the end of the partnership, both groups of students experienced significant—but distinctive—trajectories of transformative learning that unsettled not only their individual understandings, but also the dynamics of power that characterize the higher education landscape. Given the polarization wrought by border and immigration discourse and educational policies that will likely produce increasingly segregated campuses in years to come, such online partnerships show promise for critical multiculturalist educators seeking to create opportunities for learning across difference and inequality.     

让课堂成为学生幸福成长的地方——南菁高中文化课堂建设的理论自觉与实践探索

文化课堂是基于对南菁书院文化的传承创新和现代课堂教育价值的多维审视提出的课堂建设愿景。南菁高中的文化课堂建设,承载着学生生命成长的一切价值诉求,凸显"自主为先"的特色,让教学回归到"人"的世界;以学定教,尊重学生个性差异,满足不同学生幸福成长的需要;以美育整合教学内容,建立课堂与生活世界的联系;丰富课堂的存在形态,建立学习共同体,促进学生全面发展。南菁高中追求学生在课堂的"主体性、人文性、发展性、生命性"价值的实现,课堂建设由模式建构到文化自觉,努力让课堂成为学生幸福成长的地方。     

Expeditionary Learning in Information Systems: Definition,Implementation, and Assessment

In the natural sciences, collecting, cataloguing, and comparing living specimens have long been a popular, collaborative mode of discovery and learning. New species are discovered, and the relationships between species are theorized. From Aristotle's “History of Animals” to Darwin's “On the Origin of Species”, and beyond, this process of learning through expedition has yielded bountiful knowledge and insights to students of science. In this paper, we propose that expeditionary learning can be applied to a softer science: the field of information systems. In the field of information systems, specimens (information systems) are created by humans, evolving with great speed. Expeditionary learning—where students collaboratively discover, catalog, and compare rapidly evolving information system specimens—is an innovative approach for learners in the IS field, and is effective in increasing IS program visibility and delivering significant, measurable community impact. Our results indicate that learning by expedition has a strong, positive community impact through educating external learners (such as high school and community college students, and the general public), and compares favorably to conventional experiential and service learning styles. Though expeditionary learning does not yield improved course evaluations, we demonstrate that learners’ perceived self‐knowledge and intentions to pursue the subject area are improved.     

“三位一体”语文阅读教学共同体及其构建策略

“三位一体”语文阅读教学共同体是指以学生为“中位”(中心)、以教师为“主位”(主导)、以家长为“辅位”(辅助)、以阅读任务为客体(对象)、联通课(校)内外的一种课堂教学组织形式。它是在学习共同体理论启发下,为改变语文阅读小组合而不作的情况,促进学生语文核心素养的全面发展而提出来的。“三位一体”语文阅读教学共同体以合作学习为形式,共同提高为目的,超越了时空的限制,组织上具有自主性和灵活性,阅读过程具有平等性和自由性,内容上具有开放性和多样性。这些特性赋予了“三位一体”语文阅读教学共同体新功能,为构建立足课堂、融通课内外的语文阅读教学共同体提供了理论依据。“三位一体”语文阅读教学共同体需从教师、学生、家长等多方面进行构建。     

Place-Based Stewardship Education: Nurturing Aspirations to Protect the Rural Commons

In this mixed-methods study, we examine the potential of place-based stewardship education (PBSE) for nurturing rural students’ community attachment and aspirations to contribute to the preservation of the environmental “commons.” Analyzing pre- and post-experience surveys (n = 240) and open-ended responses (n = 275) collected from middle school students in a Northeast Michigan school district, we found significant increases in students’ environmental sensitivity, environmentally responsible behaviors, community attachment, and confidence in their capacities for civic action. Analyses of open-ended responses pointed to the potential of PBSE to nurture students’ identification with their community and to increase their commitment to stewardship of their community's natural resources. This study makes a unique contribution to the literature on rural schools by focusing on the environmental commons and younger generations’ commitments to preserve it as an asset of rural communities. By linking students’ learning with collective action to preserve the environmental commons, PBSE can expand students’ aspirations for the kind of world they want to live in and the roles they might play in it.     

The Representation of Reality in Teaching: A “Mimetic Didactic” Perspective on Examples in Plenary Talk

Using an observation study in Norwegian lower-secondary school classrooms this paper explores how subject matter and students’ real-world experiences are linked within the use of examples in teaching. The theory of “mimetic didactics” claims that giving students the possibility to interpret examples as both subject matter and something that is relevant to their own lives becomes a possibility through imaginative “as-if” experiences. The study finds that “as-if” experiences in the data are created by identifying with others and through a context-dependent knowledge base. The topics in the examples actualise being human within the political, economic and existential realm and offer possibilities to make knowledge relevant for the students’ future. The study’s contribution to classroom research comprises new concepts on the content aspects of classroom talk: the questions of knowledge accumulation and purpose.     

Forming shared inquiry structures to support knowledge building in a grade 5 community

This study explores the reflective processes by which a grade 5 science community co-constructed shared inquiry structures to focus and guide its inquiry about human body systems over a school year supported by a collaborative online environment. The co-constructed structures included a list of collective wondering areas as the shared focus of inquiry and models of the inquiry process in the form of “research cycle.” Qualitative analyses of field notes, classroom videos, student notebooks and interviews elaborate the evolution of the inquiry areas and the “research cycle” model as well as students’ adaptive use of the structures to guide deeper inquiry. Content analyses of students’ individual research questions and collaborative online discourse indicate that students used the structures to develop more advanced inquiry and make productive contributions. The results contribute to elaborating a reflective structuration approach to co-organizing and sustaining long-term, open-ended inquiry in knowledge building communities.     

初中音乐薄弱生转化提升策略探究

针对初中音乐薄弱生学习能力弱、不能自主地进行有效的音乐学习等问题,剖析学生的家庭因素、智力因素、学习习惯因素,提出音乐薄弱生的三大转化策略:一是动力机制上的“唤醒与兴趣”策略;二是教学手段上的“差异与多元”策略;三是推动发展的“循序与渐进”策略。以此来培养薄弱生学习音乐的兴趣,提高他们自主学习能力,突显学习效能。     

Schulfächer: Vermittlungsinstanzen von Bildung

The concept of “Bildung”, substantially developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt, and the French concept of “instruction”, substantially defined by the Marquis de Condorcet, have heavily influenced schools in German and French speaking cultures. School subjects as the general principles of ordering school knowledge prevail as soon as Bildung/instruction becomes granted by state institutions. I maintain that school subjects are the socio-historical form of the modern school system, through which Bildung/instruction continually develops in contradictory ways. On the basis of a concise definition of “Bildung”, mirrored by the contemporaneous concept of French “instruction”, the paper shows that school subjects become the common form and measure for organizing and distributing knowledge and know how to be taught and learned during the 19th century. Four theses are discussed concerning the way school subjects realize the ideals of Bildung in many contradictory forms: 1. The canon of school subjects guarantee manifold contents for developing capacities for students, in part through a realization of Humboldt’s and Condorcet’s concepts. 2. They integrate contradictory demands of society: Bildung, moralization in the sense of “governing the soul” on the one side, national cohesion, selection and distinction between students on the other. 3. They allow contents coming from higher education levels to enter primary schools. 4. They combine universal contents with local and regional ones.     

Collective Effects of Individual,Behavioral, and Contextual Factors on High School Students’ Future STEM Career Plans

This study explored the structural relationships among secondary school students’ conceptions, self-regulation, and strategies of learning science in mainland China. Three questionnaires, namely conceptions of learning science (COLS), self-regulation of learning science (SROLS), and strategies of learning science (SLS) were developed for investigating 333 Chinese high school learners’ conceptions, metacognitive self-regulation, and strategies in science. The confirmatory factor analysis results verified the validity of the three surveys. Moreover, the path analyses revealed a series of interesting findings. Learners with lower-level COLS, namely “memorizing,” “testing,” and “practicing and calculating,” tended to use surface learning strategies such as “minimizing scope of the study” and “rote learning.” However, learners’ higher-level COLS, namely “increase of knowledge,” “applying,” “understanding,” and “seeing in a new way,” had complicated connections with their SROLS and SLS. On the one hand, learners’ higher-level COLS had negative relations to “minimizing scope of the study” and “rote learning.” On the other hand, their higher-level COLS were powerful predicators for their metacognitive self-regulation and further affected their use of “deep strategy” and “rote learning.” Though Chinese secondary students with higher-level COLS usually have a negative view of “rote learning,” the functioning of their metacognitive self-regulation may change their initial attitudes towards the surface strategy. Learners with higher-level COLS still used “rote learning” as a prior step for achieving deep learning. Therefore, we concluded that the SROLS played an important mediating role between the COLS and SLS and may change learners’ original intention to utilize learning strategies.     

Conversational functions for knowledge building communities: a coding scheme for online interactions

The aim of this study was to develop a coding scheme rooted in the Knowledge Building model, named Conversational Functions for Knowledge Building (CF4KB), to analyze students’ interactions in an online undergraduate course. In order to develop the coding scheme, we analyzed students discourse and identified the kinds of “Conversational Functions” students performed. Connecting these identified functions with Knowledge Building Model principles, we developed the coding scheme to analyze knowledge building [In the present article, we used “Knowledge Building” to indicate the theoretical model and “knowledge building” to refer to the activity of the community members.] activity. Applying the resulting coding scheme, two independent judges coded 186 messages posted into Knowledge Forum by 26 students (5 men and 21 women) attending the online course of Educational Psychology at University of Valle d’Aosta to develop the coding scheme. The inter-coder agreements obtained were 77.3 and 78.0%, with Cohen’s K?=?0.68 and 0.66, respectively for Specific and Global Conversational Functions level. The theoretical implications and possible uses in different contexts for future inquiry of this instrument are discussed.     

Mathematical education and democracy

Is it possible to develop the content and form of mathematical education in such a way that it may serve as a tool of democratization in both school and society? This question is related to two different arguments. The social argument of democratization states: (1) Mathematics has an extensive range of applications, (2) because of its applications mathematics has a “society-shaping” function, and (3) in order to carry out democratic obligations and rights it is necessary to be able to identify the main principles of the development of society. The pedagogical argument of democratization states: (1) Mathematical education has a “hidden curriculum”, (2) the “hidden curriculum” of mathematical education in a traditional form implants a servile attitude towards technological questions into a large number of students, and (3) we cannot expect any development of democratic competence in school unless the teaching-learning situation is based on a dialogue and unless the curriculum is not totally determined from outside the classroom. The social argument implies that we must aim at “empowering material” which could constitute a basis for reflective knowledge i.e. knowledge about how to evaluate and criticize a mathematical model, while the pedagogical argument implies that we must aim at “open material” leaving space for decisions to be taken in the classroom. Will it become possible to create materials at the same time open and empowering? To answer this question we have to analyse the concept ‘democratic competence’, which can be related to ‘reflective knowledge’ characterized by a specific object of knowledge and a specific way of knowledge production. The ultimate aim will be to unify these characteristics in an epistemological theory of mathematical education. This paper is a revised version of \ldDemocratization and Mathematical Education\rd, R. 88-33 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Aalborg University Centre.     

Beyond Stigma and Stereotypes: An Ethnographic Study on the Effects of School-Imposed Labeling on Black Males in an Urban Charter School

This study explores the ways in which school-imposed labeling in a “no-excuses” charter school that was explicitly designed for the purpose of benefiting Black students, impacts teachers’ perceptions of Black male students who were labeled as being high risk or struggling academically, and how these students perceive their own schooling experiences. A conceptual framework with the history of how and why Black masculinity is constructed as deviant and different in the context of U.S. schools, as well as the impact of labeling on Black male students’ learning and self-esteem are detailed. While centering the labeled-students’ experiences, we examine the interactions between key stakeholders (i.e., labeled-students, teachers/administrators, and non-labeled students) at the charter school and overall the findings speak clearly to how language of deficit and pathology impacted Black male students’ schooling experiences as they negotiate racial stigma as racialized bodies at a “no-excuses” public charter school.     

“三全育人”视域下实境学习评价指标体系的构建研究

“三全育人”理念围绕立德树人的根本任务,倡导全员育人、全方位育人、全过程育人的教育理念,实现了教育资源的多元整合。立足于全员育人的教育理念,在校企合作的实境学习中,切实发挥企业在育人工作中的积极作用。以高职院校市场营销专业为例,通过企业对实境学习成果的重要性评估,运用探索性因子分析法,构建高职学生实境学习的评价指标体系,推进实境德育评价工作,以期提升实境学习的有效性,打造校企育人共同体,推进产教深度融合。