‘I’m good,but not that good’: digitally-skilled young people’s identity in computing

Computers and information technology are fast becoming a part of young people’s everyday life. However, there remains a difference between the majority who can use computers and the minority who are computer scientists or professionals. Drawing on 32 semi-structured interviews with digitally skilled young people (aged 13–19), we explore their views and aspirations in computing, with a focus on the identities and discourses that these youngsters articulate in relation to this field. Our findings suggest that, even among digitally skilled young people, traditional identities of computing as people who are clever but antisocial still prevail, which can be unattractive for youths, especially girls. Digitally skilled youths identify with computing in different ways and for different reasons. Most enjoy doing computing but few aspired to being a computer person. Implications of our findings for computing education are discussed especially the continued need to broaden identities in computing, even for the digitally skilled.     

‘It’s not what it looks like. I’m Santa’: Connecting Community through Film

The lived experiences of young people are becoming increasingly marginalised within the narrowly defined curricula of neoliberal contexts. Many young people are also cast within the media according to deficit discourses of youth, which contributes to the fragmentation of communities and the limitation of interaction between generations. This article describes a film project in which young people living in an ex-mining community in the Midlands of England worked in and with their community to create a representation of where they live. As part of the process, the young filmmakers did more than connect to other people’s memories as repositories of information; both as process and as product, their film can be seen to connect shared narratives of people and place, across time and space. We argue that this project offers a timely opportunity to reflect upon the ways in which we understand learning in and out of English classrooms.     

‘I WILL REMEMBER YOU FOREVER’

he eyes are equallyexpectant,al-though the facesare different.Silent,shy and incredibly politecollege freshman in Xi’an,China:raucous,rambunctiousand never quiet high school se-niors in Ostuni,Italy;andrespectful,mature adults in a so-cial service center in Siedelce.     

‘I’m not a “maths‐person”!’ Reconstituting mathematical subjectivities in aesthetic teaching practices

In this study I have investigated how alternative ways of teaching mathematics influence and affect Early Childhood Education (ECE) students’ attitudes towards maths and how they understand their own subjectivities as more or less mathematical during a 10‐week alternative maths course. The investigated course adopts a feminist post‐structural approach based on critical pedagogy and deconstructive theory and includes an interdisciplinary approach to investigative mathematics. The data used include the memory/narrative writings and process‐writings of 75 female teacher‐education students, collected from three different cohorts, in which the students describe their learning processes throughout the maths course. The study shows that, in the main, the students became much more positively inclined to the subject of mathematics after the maths course and agreed that this course had changed their understanding of their own mathematical subjectivity, albeit in different and varying ways.     

When ‘we wish they knew’ meets ‘I want to know’

ABSTRACT

The tension between mandated curricula and students’ interests is evident throughout the history of science education. Societal expectations for student learning often lead to standards and curricula that leave little room for students to explore their own individual interests. Occasionally, however, an event can capture the interest of so many students that teachers feel compelled to respond. The Ebola outbreak of 2014 was such an event. This article discusses findings from a study of teacher decision-making; specifically, it explores how high school science teachers in the U.S. decided whether and how they should address Ebola during the 2014–2015 school year, when the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was at its peak. Approximately 2500 teachers of science responded to an online questionnaire that addressed their Ebola-specific instruction. In comparing the decisions of those who taught about Ebola and those who did not, the study found that teachers weighed various factors, in particular student interest but also curriculum standards, time, and availability of resources for teaching about Ebola. The article concludes with implications for future urgent health-related issues.     

‘I do not like what I am becoming but…’: transforming the identity of head teachers in Catalonia

The aim of this article is to elucidate how a new system of school and teacher assessment in Catalonia is transforming the conceptions, practices and identity of head teachers, especially younger ones. It begins by considering the impact of global neoliberal policies on educational practices, highlighting their Foucauldian productive nature. It then examines the educational context of Catalonia during the last 30 years, emphasising the changing role of head teachers and the impact of neoliberal governance. This is followed by an account and analysis of in-depth interviews with four head teachers, focusing especially on how the head teacher’s objectives, practices and identities are being transformed, or produced, as a result of the new neoliberal ‘assessment regime’. It ends with a discussion on the importance of refusal and resistance to this process and the need to reconsider basic educational and social questions.     

‘I’m teaching,but I’m not really a teacher’. Teaching assistants and the construction of professional identities in Hong Kong schools

Background: In the past decade, educational settings worldwide have experienced a significant increase in the number of school-based teaching assistants (TAs). The deployment of these TAs has been accompanied by reports of confusion and uncertainty about their roles and responsibilities within schools. While the need to reframe the role and purpose of TAs is recognised, it remains unclear how this can be best achieved.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to explore the ways in which one group of TAs deployed in Hong Kong schools construct their professional identities, to understand the constraints and enablements to these processes, and to consider how different stakeholders might be able to best support this identity work.

Sample: The primary participants in this study are nine English language teacher assistants employed at different schools across Hong Kong. Other participants include full-time English language teachers who have experience of working with one of these TAs, as well as students who attend English language classes in which these TAs participate.

Design and methods: A qualitative multiple case study approach is adopted. In-depth interviews with TAs, teachers and students are used to gain a contextualised interpretation of the primary participants’ experiences of constructing professional identities within schools. A multilevel, multidimensional theoretical framework, which considers identity construction as both a discursive and experiential accomplishment, is then used to understand the constraints and enablements TAs experience in constructing these identities.

Findings: Results indicate that TAs face challenges in constructing their professional identities at institutional, interpersonal and intrapersonal levels within Hong Kong schools. In addition, the TAs believe that exercising agency to contest their positionings within schools is often insufficient to place them on a trajectory towards become a teacher. The results also suggest that the identity conflicts TAs experience can lead some to question their decision to pursue a teaching career.

Conclusions: These results imply that in order to attract and retain TAs, educational authorities need to, first, problematise identity positions such as ‘TA’ and ‘teacher’ and then reconceptualise these identities in ways that allow for a multiplication of the identity positions potentially available to all stakeholders involved in teaching within Hong Kong schools.     

On not becoming ‘a mere empirical existence’: exploring ‘who’ and ‘what’ narratives in pre-service English teachers’ writing

Standards-based reforms of education favour narrow forms of teacher professional learning tied to generic standards and pre-determined, measurable outcomes. In high-stakes accountability-driven environments, in schools and initial teacher education programs, educators are rarely encouraged to inquire into their work and professional identities through narrative writing. This article describes and analyses an assessment task in a pre-service teacher education course wherein students explore dialogic forms of critical autobiographical writing as part of an ongoing process of examining and clarifying their views and values about English teaching. Drawing on Cavarero, we argue that the writing these preservice teachers do provides a space for them to negotiate ‘what’ and ‘who’ narratives as they journey to become English teachers. Their writing productively grapples with generic ‘what’ stories such as what standards documents attempt to tell about English teaching, and the ‘unrepeatable uniqueness’ of ‘who’ stories developed out of their individual cultural, educational and linguistic difference.     

“I’m not a Hepburn yet,but I’ll always be trying”

有人说刘亦菲的走红完全得益于她的美貌,她不值得人们如此厚爱。刘亦菲是坦诚的,她承认自己因美貌而走俏荧屏;刘亦菲是清纯的,她自然羞涩的微笑确实打动了无数影迷的心。刘亦菲是无辜的,因为漂亮不是罪过!刘亦菲更是自强的,她正在勤学苦练,誓做才貌双全的绝代佳人。     

Dutch adolescents’ narratives about democracy: ‘I know what democracy means,but not what it means to me’

In the last decade, educational scholars have studied various aspects of adolescents’ citizenship narratives. This paper reports on a qualitative study into the narratives about democracy of 27 adolescents from an urban area in the Netherlands. The aim of the study was to gain an insight into the type of democratic engagement that Dutch adolescents develop. Fourteen vocational and 13 pre-university students were selected. Each student was interviewed twice. Narrative thematic data analysis revealed that only five students had developed a strong conception of democracy. Our findings suggest that few students had spent time developing and challenging their narratives about democracy, and that few students have developed a greater sense of democratic engagement. Our paper concludes with several suggestions for furthering the study and practice of democratic citizenship education.     

‘Will I learn what I want to learn?’ Usable representations, ‘students’ and OECD assessment production

Amid growing debates around international assessment tools in educational policy, few have critically examined how students themselves are cast in policy tool production processes and discourse. Drawing on Stuart Hall's concept of representation, we show how higher education (HE) ‘students’ are constructed, fixed and normalized by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) initiative. Based on an analysis of AHELO texts, we argue that the OECD, during the early stages of test production, fixes and circulates the meaning of ‘students’ as represented objects. We identify and analyze two distinct representational practices at work in AHELO texts: classifying and organizing, and marking. We posit that by fixing images of the student as an object of learning and as a consumer–investor subject, the OECD creates ‘usable’ representations of ‘students’ to claim jurisdiction over teaching and learning in HE and to justify intervention through standardized testing.     

‘I am not clever,they are cleverer than us’: children reading in the primary school

This paper examines the experiences of children learning to read in a multi-ethnic London primary school. The data are drawn from doctoral research, based on ethnographic fieldwork, with children aged six to seven years and ten to eleven years. Reading is revealed as a strongly emotional realm for children. The children are weak to resist teacher assessment of themselves, but nonetheless seek to create consoling narratives against what they perceive to be the negative identity of ‘poor reader’. The data are distinctive, as resistance to school hierarchies and strong feelings about educational failure are manifested in the narratives of children as young as six years old.     

‘I know it’s not proper research,but…’: how professionals’ understandings of research can frustrate its potential for CPD

This article draws upon the work of two researchers who facilitated practitioner research with school professionals in Liverpool. The researchers themselves had not been involved in practitioner research before. In this account, the researchers reflect critically upon their own experience. The discussion presents the learning curve that the researchers underwent as well as what they discovered about the relationship between practitioners and researchers when engaged in school‐based research. Crucially the issue of practitioners’ understandings of what constituted ‘good’ research emerged as a significant issue. In particular, positivist notions of research that drew from popular scientific understandings, as well as the culture of numerical targeting in the schools system, seemed to shape these practitioners’ sense of what was expected of them as practitioner‐researchers. The article finishes by reflecting upon the possible lessons that this work presents for education managers considering practitioner research approaches for continuing professional development (CPD).     

‘I do not think I actually do it well’: a discourse analysis of Australian senior secondary teachers’ self-efficacy and attitudes towards implementation of differentiated instruction

Differentiated instruction is a proactive teaching model and philosophy with demonstrated potential to cater for diverse learners and create inclusive classrooms. There is little research, however, into the implementation of this approach in the senior secondary classroom. Teachers’ implementation of differentiated instruction has been shown to be linked to teacher attitudes and self-efficacy in other settings. This study investigated the impact of teachers’ self-efficacy and attitudes towards the implementation of differentiated instruction in the senior secondary context across two Australian states with a total of five participating teachers. The A (Affective) B (Behaviour) C (Cognitive) model was employed to define teacher attitudes from interviews concerning differentiated instruction. Findings indicated that teacher knowledge was a major factor influencing differentiation, in addition to attitude and self-efficacy. The discourse analysis demonstrated that teachers held a greater knowledge of differentiation strategies than the concepts that underpin the differentiated instruction framework. Additionally, time constraints and feelings of failure in implementing differentiation strategies impacted teacher attitudes. Teacher knowledge, attitude and self-efficacy were interrelated and impacted on teachers’ implementation of differentiated instruction in the senior secondary classroom. Implications for professional development to address student needs through differentiated instruction in the inclusive senior secondary classroom teacher are discussed.     

I was not here yesterday

通过本单元的学习，你将认识一种新的语法项目：一般过去时。你将能初步运用一般过去时询问过去的日期和描述过去的经历，并能识记和运用本单元中表示过去时间的短语，以及一些固定搭配的词组，短语。     

Learning,literacy and identity: ‘I don’t think I’m a failure any more’

The impact of participation in adult literacy programmes on learners’ identities is examined through an interrogation of their past and current experiences and the assessment of the effect of particular pedagogies. The findings show how learners’ positive experiences in their programmes had caused them to re-evaluate their previous understandings and enabled the construction of new identities as people that are able to learn. These changes had come about through the challenging of negative discourses, the creation of new figured worlds and imagined futures, and the use of a learning curriculum where learners’ experiences were utilized as positive resources.     

‘I’m not here to learn how to mark someone else’s stuff’: an investigation of an online peer-to-peer review workshop tool

In this article, we explore the intersecting concepts of fairness, trust and temporality in relation to the implementation of an online peer-to-peer review Moodle Workshop tool at a Sydney metropolitan university. Drawing on qualitative interviews with unit convenors and online surveys of students using the Workshop tool, we seek to highlight a complex array of attitudes, both varied and contested, towards online peer assessment. In particular, we seek to untangle convenors’ positive appraisal of the Workshop tool as a method of encouraging ‘meta-cognitive’ skills, and student perceptions relating to the redistribution of staff marking workload vis-à-vis the peer review tool as ‘unfair’, ‘time-consuming’ and ‘unprofessional’. While the Workshop tool represents an innovative approach to the development of students’ meta-cognitive attributes, the competitive atmosphere that circulates, and is quietly encouraged, within the tertiary education sector limits the true collaborative pedagogical potential and capacities approach built into peer-to-peer review initiatives like the Workshop tool.     

Scientific ‘Laws’, ‘Hypotheses’ and ‘Theories’

Some commonly held erroneous notions about the terms laws, hypotheses and theories are pointed out with specific examples from different branches of science.     

‘知’‘信’‘行’德育三部曲

所谓德育 ,就是按照特定时代、特定社会的道德规范来培养塑造个体的道德意识、信念和行为习惯。它具有三层意义 :第一 ,首先必须使受教育者知晓和理解社会的行为规范 ,并发展其道德认识能力 ,道德判断能力和道德选择能力 ,这便是德育中的“知”。第二 ,要使受教育者相信“知”的内容 ,把其道德认识内化 ,升华为道德信念和道德理想 ,这就是德育中的“信”。第三 ,德育的最终目标就是使教育者将道德认识与道德信念转化为道德行为 ,并培养良好的习惯 ,这是德育的“行”。因此 ,由未知到知、由知到信、由信到行是德育工作有机的三个环节 ,构成了…     

‘亲戚’就是‘父母’

讲《廉颇蔺相如列传》,我说:“臣所以去亲戚而事君者,徒慕君之高义也”一句中的“亲戚”,其义如同“父母”。有人跟我指出:“你讲错了,‘亲戚’并非