A Review of: “Learning to Labor in New Times”

This article explores the limits of introductory social justice education and the ways in which a social foundations course could expand and deepen the social justice lens of current and future educators. The authors, members of an introductory graduate-level Social Foundations course, discuss the limitations they realized in their previous social justice education courses, and the importance of courses that further student's understandings of the ever-evolving ways people enact and experience identity, power, and privilege. The authors identify three main pedagogical and theoretical elements that advanced their social justice knowledge: examining theories for their potential to uncover or obscure lived experience; unpacking binary constructions of identity; and exploring the limits and possibilities of intersectional thinking. This article offers implications and suggestions for educators who seek to challenge and expand the social justice knowledge of future educators and administrators.     

“My Little Arithmeticians!” Pedagogic Ideals in Dutch Mathematics Textbooks, 1790‐1850

During the first half of the 19th century mathematics textbooks for lower and middle class education were often used to confront the pupil with middle class values. Attitude towards study, general knowledge and morals made their appearance in mathematics textbooks. This form of mathematics education gradually disappeared by the middle of the century. Three hypothesis will be formulated which could explain the disappearance of the phenomenon.     

“It's That Easy”: Designing Assignments That Blend Old and New Literacies

This article recounts what happened when one of the authors, a pre-service teacher, introduced a digital multimodal composition project in her 9th-grade inclusion English classes to support junior high students as they read the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather than regard new literacies as competing with print literacy for attention, the authors argue that teachers serve students best when they design assignments that blend old and new literacies in ways that allow them to coexist and inform one another.     

EXCERPTS: “The Role of Art in My Life and in Jewish Education”

For Jewish education, as for the Jewish People, the overriding lesson of the Iraqi War is the inadequacy of secular political and social movements as the sole arbiters of “relevance.” Both liberal and conservative ideologies failed in their assessment of the duration of the war and its consequences. Both displayed a moral obtuseness and selectivity from which sensitive people must recoil. From this point on, we Jews need to return to a more venerable, more sacred standard: our collective reading of the will of God, as embodied in the Torah, the Talmudic tradition, and subsequent Jewish encapsulations.     

Jumping the Fences: Maori women's resistance to missionary schooling in northern New Zealand 1823‐1835

This article examines the educative activities of Marianne Coldham Williams and Jane Nelson Williams, who were recruited by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in the 1820s to serve in its New Zealand mission. As educated, middle class Anglican women, Marianne and Jane held firm beliefs regarding the role of Christian wives and mothers and it was this evangelical framework that guided their missionary work and activities. From the outset, the CMS and its missionaries believed that Maori, as an indigenous people, were in need of salvation and those religious and cultural changes that missionaries introduced were beneficial to Maori. Although Maori welcomed the arrival of Pakeha (European) for the new knowledge that they brought, they did not seek knowledge to change, replace or transform their world. The purpose of the second CMS mission to northern New Zealand in the 1820s was twofold; to civilise local Maori (Nga Puhi) and, secondly, spread the teachings of the Gospel. There were two related aspects to this civilisation. In the first instance, missionary women and men were required to provide the model example of the Christian family. Secondly, schools were established to teach Nga Puhi Scriptural knowledge in the hope that this would transform them from heathen savages to Christian women and men. More specifically, Nga Puhi women were considered far more (morally) degraded than men and in need of the civilising influence and Christian teachings of missionary women. Consequently, the first school that was opened was for Nga Puhi women. The school curriculum supported the policies and practices of civilisation and Christianisation based on exigencies of race and gender and its relationship with domesticity and labour. A direct consequence of this was that Nga Puhi women were trapped between the two competing worlds. They did not conform to missionary expectations and contested their dual positioning by engaging in acts designed to undermine Marianne and Jane's attempts to re‐form them as useful Christian women. This involved attempts to subvert Marianne and Jane's educative activities through the public display of resistance to schooling and associated Christian practices that were introduced     

The New Woman in W.B.Yeats’ “When You Are Old”

\"当你年老时\"是爱尔兰诗人叶芝的代表作之一,也是他献给爱尔兰独立运动女战士茅德·冈的一首爱情诗。在诗中,叶芝塑造了一个有别于英国维多利亚时期女性的新女性形象。这种新女性相对独立,受过良好的教育,不囿于家庭生活,更注重积极的社会生活。叶芝借助此诗表明了他对这种强有力的新女性气质的推崇以及对她们朝圣者式灵魂的认同。     

“Thirty Years Old and I'm Allowed to be Late”: the politics of time at an urban community college

Within recent years scholars in both sociology of education and curriculum studies have explored what it is about the school that reproduces class, race and gender relations that maintain an unequal social structure. While it has long been recognized that school outcomes differ along these lines, the role that the school plays in creating differential outcomes and forms of consciousness that sustain fundamental inequalities and antagonisms has been largely ignored. This is as much true for scholars like Bowles and Gintis as it is for earlier functionalists.

This article begins to fill this void by focusing on the relationship between the ‘hidden curriculum’ and student culture. Data presented here were gathered as part of a larger study on the ‘lived culture’ of lower class black students in a community college (which I call Urban College) located in a large northeastern city in the United States. I argue that, rather than ‘determine’ student culture in any simple sense, the hidden curriculum and student culture emerge in relation to one another. Each creates aspects of the other and neither can be discussed or analyzed separately. The way in which elements of the hidden curriculum combine in a concrete culture to produce aspects of student consciousness is also discussed.     

A Review of: “Jewish Lives,Jewish Learning: Adult Jewish Learning in Theory and Practice by Diane Tickton Schuster (UAHC Press, 2003)”

This articles explores how a group of women in the Former Soviet Union grapple with questions of Jewish identity and Jewish “authenticity” as they participate in adult Jewish learning program that employs methods of feminist pedagogy and transformative learning. The study reflects on areas of dissonance between the transformational learning process and the tenacity of the women's world assumptions that are shaped by background, history, and worldview. While the learning process seems to be prompting these women to seriously and critically reflect on and reframe their self-understanding as learners and as Jews, their limited content-knowledge combined with a tentative sense of personal authority about Jewish life seems to impede their ability to harmonize their learning with a clear sense of what constitutes authentic practice of Judaism.     

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.     

Developing an instrument to characterise peer‐led groups in collaborative learning environments: assessing problem‐solving approach and group interaction

Collaborative learning is being used extensively by educators at all levels. Peer‐led team learning in a version of collaborative learning that has shown consistent success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Using a multi‐phase research study we describe the development of an observation instrument that can be used to assess peer‐led group learning. This paper illustrates the development of a classification system for peer‐led learning groups and an instrument based on this classification system. The instrument evaluates small learning groups on two important aspects of group learning: problem solving approach and group interaction style. We provide evidence of the factor structure of the two dimensions using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. We also provide information about the reliability of the two scales as measured by the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Data from a large peer‐led learning programme was used to conduct the factor analysis. Results from the factor analysis confirmed that the instrument is actually measuring two key characteristics of small learning groups: problem solving approach and group interaction style, characteristics that have been linked to effective functioning of the group and to the student learning outcomes. This instrument may be particularly appealing to practitioners (faculty members, those running small‐group learning programmes, etc.) because it is easy to use and it does not require extensive time for analysis.     

Developing new “Professionals”: Service learning in marketing as an opportunity to innovate in higher education

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) promotes the use of student-centered participatory methodologies and the design of curricula focused on the acquisition of competences. The objective of this paper is to identify the categories of competence that contribute the most to achieving learning outcomes through the practice of Service Learning (SL) in the teaching of marketing. Using the categories described in the Tuning model, we design a model to analyze the relationships between perceived learning outcomes and competences. The main findings are: 1) there is no evidence of any relationship between perceived interpersonal and systemic competences and perceived learning outcomes, 2) there is a relationship between perceived instrumental competences and perceived learning outcomes and, 3) students do not perceive that achievement of learning outcomes is the cause of the grades they obtain. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications.     

“I have to be three steps ahead”: Academically Gifted African American Male Students in an Urban High School on the Tension between an Ethnic and Academic Identity

This case study investigation of three Academically Gifted African American male high school seniors in a predominantly African American urban high school examines the interplay between their ethnic and academic identity. Using an embedded micro-ethnographic approach, we explore the extent to which these students value educational attainment, the extent to which they connect with their ethnicity, and those “significant others” who inhibit or dissuade the development of their ethnic and/or academic identity. Consistent with the conclusions of more recent educational literature, findings indicate participants in this investigation value the purpose and intent of schooling and the mobility associated with it, express “Blackness” is an essential component of their academic achievement and overall self concept, and credit people within their immediate social network for opening their eyes to social injustices within the world at an early age. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Defending the “Argentine Way of Life”. The State and School Textbooks in Argentina (1884‐1984)

The central hypothesis of this article is that the way in which school textbooks have hen regulated has not been a constant one, but has changed according to the “reason” prevailing between three main actors related to education: the corporation of educators, the State and last, the market. Besides, the historical study of schoolbook regulations proves that these variations do not seem to be directly linked to the political nature of the governments (democratic or resulting from a coup d'etat) but to the logic of such actors, and in a clear pursue one goal: argentine children should be educated according to the proper patterns of argentine nationality and, therefore, school textbooks were to preserve the “argentine way of life”.     

“I’m Going to Israel and All I Need to Pack Is My Imagination”: Pretend Trips to Israel in Jewish Early Childhood Education

ABSTRACT

This article examines the practice of pretend Israel trips in Jewish early childhood education. Jewish early childhood educators who work in markedly different preschool settings, and who have differing beliefs about Israel and Israel education, nonetheless converge on a practice of pretend trips to Israel that remains remarkably stable across settings. This article examines how and why these pretend trips have become part of the “grammar” of Jewish early childhood education, illuminating a practice that is simultaneously beloved and unsatisfying for Jewish early childhood educators who care about early childhood education and Israel education.