From Peasant to Princess: A Standards Conversion Story with a Twist

The first author, a student in a graduate children’s literature class, designed a project to locate “good” mathematics-based children’s literature selections. However, the reference tools usually consulted (e.g., Books in Print) to locate books by topic were of little help, and those she located under individual mathematics topics were mostly traditional mathematics books rather than good read-aloud selections. Consequently, she perused the university library’s sizeable juvenile collection to find books that would meet her selection criteria. This article describes the influence of two landmark documents for mathematics teaching and learning—Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 1989) and Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000)—as she engaged in the process.

Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and the Brokering of Learning Provision for Young Adults

This paper argues that Amartya Sen’s (Development as freedom, New York: Random House, 1999) concept of “capabilities” provides a useful framework for interpreting the brokering of learning provisions that emerged as a key feature of reforms to education and training in Queensland (Australia) for young people. Sen’s capability approach is presented as a way of understanding the place of vocational learning in capability deprivation and enhancement. Methodologically, this account comes from a case study of the reforms’ birthing and trial phases (2000–2006) (Harreveld and Singh 2007, Queensland’s education and training reforms for the future: the journey so far in senior phase learning. Brisbane, Qld: Department of Education, Training and the Arts). Evidence about the brokering of learning provision for young people comes from Queensland’s youth support coordinators, community mentoring scheme, flexible learning services and a work readiness program.

Power Relationships in Rumpelstiltskin: A Textual Comparison of a Traditional and a Reconstructed Fairy Tale

Reconstructed fairy tales provide a different point of view and challenge the assumptions of a common set of values; for that reason, these stories provide a medium in which to examine power relationships in texts by applying a critical multicultural analysis (Botelho & Rudman, forthcoming, 2008, A critical multicultural analysis of children’s literature: Mirrors, windows and doors. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum) to identify and analyze power relations of Rumpelstiltskin (Grimm & Grimm, 1812/1987, New York: Bantam) and Rumpelstiltskin’s Daughter (Stanley, 1997, New York: Morrow Junior Books). Specifically, this study examines how power is exercised on a continuum: domination, collusion, resistance, and agency. Findings indicate that by identifying and questioning text ideologies, critical readers can consider how texts maintain, counteract, or promote alternative systemic power structures.

Looking for Daisy: constructing teacher identities

Research on teacher identities is both important and increasing. In this forum contribution I re-interpret assertions about an African American science teacher’s identities in terms of Jonathon Turner’s (2002) constructs of role identity and sub-identity. I contest the notion of renegotiation of identities, suggesting that particular role identities can be brought to the foreground and then backgrounded depending on the situation and the need to confirm a sub-identity. Finally, I recommend the inclusion of teachers’ voices in identity research through greater use of co-authoring roles for teachers.

On semiotics and subjectivity: a response to Tony Brown’s “signifying ‘students’, ‘teachers’, and ‘mathematics’: a reading of a special issue”

In this response we address some of the significant issues that Tony Brown raised in his analysis and critique of the Special Issue of Educational Studies in Mathematics on “Semiotic perspectives in mathematics education” (Sáenz-Ludlow & Presmeg, Educational Studies in Mathematics 61(1–2), 2006). Among these issues are conceptualizations of subjectivity and the notion that particular readings of Peircean and Vygotskian semiotics may limit the ways that authors define key actors or elements in mathematics education, namely students, teachers and the nature of mathematics. To deepen the conversation, we comment on Brown’s approach and explore the theoretical apparatus of Jacques Lacan that informs Brown’s discourse. We show some of the intrinsic limitations of the Lacanian idea of subjectivity that permeates Brown’s insightful analysis and conclude with a suggestion about some possible lines of research in mathematics education.

Adolescent Journeys: Finding Female Authority in <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Rain Catchers and The House on Mango Street</Emphasis>

This article compares the first-person narratives of two adolescent girls in the novels The Rain Catchers and The House on Mango Street. I propose that adolescent girls can use literacy to read the world around them as a text and therefore help them to form their own identities enough to ultimately find authority in telling their own stories. I use Judith Langer’s theory of envisionment-building as a primary lens through which to interpret the girls’ narrative work and further elucidate the feminist aspects involved through Belenky et al.’s famous work, Women’s Ways of Knowing.

Surviving Rescue: A Feminist Reading of Scott O’Dell’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Island of the Blue Dolphins</Emphasis>

Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins tells the archetypal story of the young, virgin, orphan girl who is vulnerable to either debauchery or rescue. That such a girl must succumb to either one or the other is a necessary element of the archetype. In O’Dell’s work—one intended, after all, for children—the heroine is rescued by a paternalistic figure and re-inscribed into the patriarchal world. Yet, in the hands of young readers, Island—part fairytale, part rescue narrative, part feminist parable—becomes a story of independence and survival, despite the heroine’s “rescue” at the end.

Knowing Who Your Friends Are: Aspects of the Politics of Logical Empiricism

This paper comments on Reisch’s book How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science. Overall supportive of Reisch’s project and perspective, it raises certain points where the data appear inconclusive and either provides additional support or briefly explores some interpretative alternatives.

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Ecofutures in Africa: Jenny Robson’s Savannah 2116 AD

Jenny Robson’s Savannah 2216 AD, a dark, futuristic novel for young adults, provides a strong critique on much of the world’s predilection for saving Africa’s animals at the expense of those human communities who are perceived to be in the way of the preservation of the continent’s remaining wild spaces. Using Robson’s novel as template, this article examines a few of those discourses regarding wilderness and conservation that have attached to Africa. Savannah 2116 AD strongly yet indirectly hints that literary educators should revisit the often unquestioned adoption of ‘greening’ agendas in school curricula which persist in re-colonising geo-political spaces by ignoring the fact that erecting fences between perceived conservators and destroyers, between spaces for wild animals and humans, merely condemns Africa’s animal riches to eventual death.

Sense of Loss, Belonging, and Storytelling: An Anglo-Indian Narrator in The Borrowers

Mary Norton’s The Borrowers has a complicated narrative framework, through which the story of the small people, the Borrowers, is told. Once we find that the embedded story is carefully set at the turn of the nineteenth century, parallels with Burnett’s The Secret Garden are recognized, in which a lonely Anglo-Indian child experiences some mysterious happenings in an old English country house. Sharing the cultural ambiguity and the sense of loss, both the Garden’s Mary and The Borrowers’ Boy tell stories. Comparing the two works, I will explore the specific cultural meaning of the life of an Anglo-Indian child, and how it relates to the theme of The Borrowers.

An Eye for an I: Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Questions of Identity

This paper sees Neil Gaiman’s Coraline as following a darker tradition in children’s literature, most commonly found in the fairy tale. It explores some of the existential issues that concern us all: to do with identity, sex, death, ontology, evil, desire and violence. The article takes a largely psychoanalytical approach, showing how Freud’s concept of the Uncanny is particularly helpful in explaining both the text’s appeal, and its creepy uneasiness. Namely, our fears about existence and identity as separate beings: our worry that we will either not be noticed (being invisible and isolated), or we will be completely consumed by the attention of another. Lacan’s concepts of the Symbolic and the Real provide the theoretical underpinning for this reading, together with Kristeva’s notion of the abject.

Beyond Borders: Reading “Other” Places in Children’s Literature

The author analyzes two texts, Gloria Whelan’s Homeless Bird and Deborah Ellis’s Parvana’s Journey, in an attempt to explain some of the problems and difficulties associated with those texts. The author examines Whelan’s representations of India and finds troubling binaries associated with that text. In comparison, the author finds Ellis’s depictions of Afghanistan more nuanced and complex. The author also discusses student reception of both texts and offers ways to problematize some of their reactions.

Two is the Beginning of the End: Peter Pan and the Doctrine of Reminiscence

This article considers J.M. Barrie’s satirical treatment of the Platonic doctrine of reminiscence in Peter Pan, and how Barrie’s work both honors and undercuts it. It will first analyze the Platonic notion of the doctrine of reminiscence in Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (1807). It will then show its influence on Victorian literature in the depiction of the exalted perception and moral purity of children, and how Barrie satirizes these ideals by underscoring the ignorance and savage qualities of the children in Peter Pan. The essay will also explore the portrayal of the Eden of childhood in Wordsworth’s poem (as influenced by Plato), and how Barrie subverts this utopia by presenting a dystopic world where Darwinian principles rule. Like Darwin, Barrie argues for a natural rather than a divine origin of species and demonstrates the struggle for existence in a profoundly disturbing way. Finally, the essay will contemplate the subject of immortality and how, far from being an idealized condition as in Wordsworth’s poetry, it is a far more ambivalent state in Peter Pan.

Ocean to outback: Léonie Rennie’s contribution to science education in Australia

In this article I initially borrow a metaphor from an art exhibition, Ocean to Outback, as a way to express my perspective on the contribution that Léonie Rennie has made to science education in Australia. I then consider Léonie’s contributions as overlapping themes. In particular, Léonie’s well-known research on gender and issues of equity in science education is explored as well as her highly regarded work on learning science in out-of-school settings. Curriculum integration is a less well-known aspect of Léonie’s research that also is considered. Léonie’s important contributions to research training and policy in science education are briefly described and commented on. Finally, I return to the metaphor of Ocean to Outback that reflects the enormity of the contribution that Léonie has made but also gives insight into her personal journey and qualities.

In the Ellison Tradition: In/Visible Bodies of Adolescent and YA Fiction

When Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man was published in 1952, he could not have known the impact his metaphor of invisibility would have on adolescent and YA literature. However, upon closer inspection, the importance and prevalence of his metaphor becomes evident. Authors of adolescent and YA literature routinely use the metaphor as an intertextual shortcut to discuss issues that shape adolescent subjectivity, which is demonstrated through an examination of Sapphire’s Push, Virginia Hamilton’s The Planet of Junior Brown, and Robert Cormier’s Fade.

“Not Censorship but Selection”: Censorship and/as Prizing

This essay calls for a fresh critical approach to the topic of censorship, suggesting that anticensorship efforts, while important and necessary, function much like literary prizing. The analysis draws especially on James English’s recent study The Economy of Prestige. There are two central arguments: first, that the librarian ethic of “selection”––introduced by Lester Asheim in 1953 as a counterpoint to censorship––has contributed to the unfortunate construction of the censor as a “moron”; and second, that anticensorship efforts more generally tend toward uncritical canon-making, attributing value to books simply because they’ve been censored or (more typically) challenged.

The Contribution of Trade Books to Early Science Literacy: In and Out of School

Lifelong science literacy begins with attitudes and interests established early in childhood. The use of trade books (i.e., a literary work intended for sale to the general public) in North American school classrooms to support the development of science literacy invites an examination of the quality of science content disseminated to students. A total of 116 trade books were examined to: (a) determine the degree to which science trade books complement expected science knowledge outcomes outlined in school curricula, and (b) compare trade book content to the goals of scientific literacy. Analysis across four science topics, Dinosaurs, Space, Inheritance, and Growth and Life Properties, revealed that this body of children’s literature is inconsistent in its coverage of curricular goals and elements of scientific literacy. Because trade books represent children’s first exposure to science, these shortcomings should be addressed if these books are to be maximally effective in promoting science literacy. Implications for using trade books in the classroom are discussed.

The Project in Intergroup Education and Sarason’s Modal Process of Change: A Historical Exemplar of Educational Reform

In 1971, Seymour Sarason published his now classic book on educational reform entitled, The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change. In the text, Sarason devotes an entire chapter to what he terms the modal process of change. The characteristics of this process, unfortunately, remain salient in today’s educational climate. The Project in Intergroup Education was an educational reform that attempted to bring issues of intolerance and discrimination into K-12 classrooms during the post WWII era. In this article, I contend that using the conceptual lens suggested by Sarason’s modal process, the examination of the Project offers a historical exemplar of an educational change and illuminates ways in which we might seek to challenge the typical implementation of change. Specifically we can see counterevidence to the modal process in the Project’s emphasis on the significance and inclusion of the classroom teacher, the importance of school contexts and particular needs of students, and in the ways in which the curricular work of participating teachers evinced the changes sought by Project leaders.

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