A research base for new objectives of science teaching

A bright year 7 student was going through the usual steps that lead to the concept of density and its values for wood and brass and aluminium. After mensurating the volumes of cuboids of these materials he was observing the volume of liquid they displaced in a measuring cylinder. As he carefully pushed the wooden cuboid below the surface, I asked him, “Why do you have to push the wood down?” “Because it floats otherwise”, he replied. “Why didn't you have to push the aluminium down?” “Because there was not enough water to make it float”. “Tell me more”, I said. “Well, sir, you must have seen metal ships floating on the sea. If there's enough water, metal will float, but not in a little bit like this”. Just after describing for me how liquid acetone evaporated if it is placed on your skin, a first year university chemistry student with good test results was unable to give me any examples of a liquified gas. When pressed he muttered “Solids, liquids, gases” (A strangely immutable sequence that has neither evolutionary nor biblical support.) and said he thought the cO in a cylinder was probably liquid. Gases could be liquified by lowering the temperature, he said. On being asked to describe what would happen if he steadily cooled down the air in a space, he began by quoting, “Air molecules, being particles moving very rapidly with energy proportional to temperature”. As he cooled them down in thought, he held out his hands and slowed down the vibration of his fingers about a point in space. Finally, his fingers stopped and he said, “It's nothing”. “What do you mean, has it disappeared?” I said. “No”, he replied, but it's no longer a gas, and it's not a liquid or a solid. They are all just there suspended in space. It's no-thing”.     

ORDER AND CONTENT OF THE BIBLICAL COURSES IN A COLLEGE CURRICULUM∗

The man is a blue collar worker. He tells the story of his nine year old daughter. She said that the only thing she really wanted for Christmas was a pair of Vidal Sassoon Jeans. He explained to her that they really weren't wealthy enough to afford $40 jeans. Maybe Levis would do. “Forget it,” she said. “If I can't have what I want, I don't want anything.”

The man said that they saved up and got her the Sassoon jeans for Christmas. “But you know,” he mused, “she judges the others in her class on what kind of designer jeans they have. They form cliques based on their clothes. It's their way of being somebody, being acceptable, being ‘in’.”     

The Crisis in Jewish Education

What will the Jewish supplementary school be in the 1990's? A more definitive question might be what will it supplement? In the beginning “supplementary” schools brought Jewish knowled[ggrave]e to the student who was already experiencing living Judaism in the home. In the 1960's, heyday of Jewish afternoon schools, the school supplemented secular knowledge and secular living with Jewish knowledge and some Jewish life experience as the home contributed less and less.     

DEVELOPING A ZIONIST CURRICULUM FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAMS

Our Theme is a significant one: “The Role of Jewish Education in Shaping the Jewish Future.” It speaks to some of our current concerns and emerging needs as educators. Yet, I must confess I didn't choose that wording. If I had titled it, it would have been titled “The Role of the Jewish Educator in Shaping the Jewish Future.”     

SHOULD JEWISH SUPPLEMENTARY RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS BE LIKE THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

Whether the Jewish supplementary school should be operated as if it were a public school depends on the goals of Jewish education. “In terms of ultimate goals, however, Jewish education is now at a crossroads.”¹ While all Jewish educators would probably agree with Harold Schulweis' statement that “it is our sacred task to create Jews,”² educators are not in agreement over what type of Jews we are to create and how we are to create them. Jewish educators can be divided into two groups. One group wants to create “educated, thinking Jews” — goal #1—while the other desires to shape children into “feeling Jews” —goal #2.     

Educational Expectations: How They Differ Around the World: Implications for Teaching ESL College Students

Expectations regarding teacher-student relationships, classroom interactions, testing and evaluation, and academic integrity vary widely around the world. Understanding these differences can be critical to enhancing the academic success of ESL(English as a Second Language) college students. Faculty working with ESL students often ask: “Why won't my students participate more in class?” “Why do my students only repeat back what I've said?” “Why won't they tell me what they think?” “Why don't they ever know what courses they want to take when they come to registration or advisement?” Students often ask: “Why does my professor keep asking me to talk about my personal experiences? We never had to do that in my country. Why is it such a big deal to do that here?” There are a lot of “why's” floating around the campus. This article addresses some of these questions.     

A MORE PRACTICAL PEDAGOGICAL IDEAL: SEARCHING FOR A CRITERION OF DEWEYAN GROWTH

When Dewey scholars and educational theorists appeal to the value of educative growth, what exactly do they mean? Is an individual's growth contingent on receiving a formal education? Is growth too abstract a goal for educators to pursue? Richard Rorty contended that the request for a “criterion of growth” is a mistake made by John Dewey's “conservative critics,” for it unnecessarily restricts the future “down to the size of the present.” Nonetheless, educational practitioners inspired by Dewey's educational writings may ask Dewey scholars and educational theorists, “How do I facilitate growth in my classroom?” Here Shane Ralston asserts, in spite of Rorty's argument, that searching for a more concrete standard of Deweyan growth is perfectly legitimate. In this essay, Ralston reviews four recent books on Dewey's educational philosophy—Naoko Saito's The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson, Stephen Fishman and Lucille McCarthy's John Dewey and the Philosophy and Practice of Hope, and James Scott Johnston's Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy and Deweyan Inquiry: From Educational Theory to Practice—and through his analysis identifies some possible ways for Dewey‐inspired educators to make growth a more practical pedagogical ideal.     

DEWEY,ECOLOGY, AND EDUCATION: HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY DEBATES OVER DEWEY'S NATURALISM AND (TRANSACTIONAL) REALISM

In the early 1970s, Thomas Colwell argued for an “ecological basis [for] human community.” He suggested that “naturalistic transactionalism” was being put forward by some ecologists and some philosophers of education, but independently of each other. He suspected that ecologists were working on their own versions of naturalistic transactionalism independently of John Dewey. In this essay, Deron Boyles examines Colwell's central claim as well as his lament as a starting point for a larger inquiry into Dewey's thought. Boyles explores the following questions: First, was and is there a dearth of literature regarding Dewey as an ecological philosopher? Second, if a literature exists, what does it say? Should Dewey be seen as biocentric, anthropocentric, or something else entirely? Finally, of what importance are the terms and concepts in understanding and, as a result, determining Dewey's ecological thought in relation to education?     

NEEDED: COMMUNAL PLANNING AND BETTER FUNDING

That Central agencies for Jewish education throughout North America are in difficulty is now an established fact. The challenges facing these agencies relate principally to the two “f's”: function and financing. As the configuration and power structure of Jewish communities have changed, the traditional activities of bureaus and boards of Jewish education have come under intense scrutiny. At the same time, the geometric escalation of Jewish community demands on decreasing financial resources has made it increasingly difficult for bureaus to secure the funding needed to carry out their full array of programs.     

BUREAUS AND MOVEMENTS TOWARD COOPERATION AND SYNERGISM

For some eighty years, Bureaus of Jewish Education, working under a variety of names, have served the cause of Jewish education and the Jewish community. From time to time, as have all agencies of the Jewish community, the Bureaus have had to rethink their roles. Because of radical shifts in the way Jews live their lives, the nature of Jewish community, and the emergence of Jewish education as a priority, at least, in the rhetoric of Jewish life, this would appear to be such a moment. In doing so, agencies have to understand the questions and problems that are specific to their times and also revisit old questions to find new answers. An example of the former is what happens to the advocacy role of the bureau when the Federation, at least rhetorically, adopts Jewish education as a priority. An old question that, perhaps, requires new answers is “What ought to be the relationship between Bureaus of Jewish Education and denominational movements?” In this article, I wish to turn my attention to this question, and, perhaps, provide some basis for formulating policy and ideas about practice. My response cannot help but be affected by my experience as Director of the Department of Education of The United Synagogue of America but it should not be taken as the official position of The United Synagogue.     

“We Share the Same Biology…” Cultivating Cross-Cultural Empathy and Global Ethics Through Multilingualism

The “language-culture tesseract” hypothesized in the September 2010 issue of Mind, Brain, and Education suggests successive links between non-native language (NNL) acquisition, the development of cross-cultural empathy, and prosocial global ethics. Invoking Goethe's (1833/1999) aphorism, “those who do not know other languages know nothing of their own,” it was argued that becoming plurilingual constitutes an essential step toward metalinguistic and metacultural awareness; and that “what is true of water for a fish is also true of the mother tongue and of the native culture for a human being.” In this article, we would like to elaborate on that argument and submit to the MBE community the idea of applying the developing understanding of empathy in the brain toward the design of new approaches to NNL education that maximize its potential to cultivate a positive local–global dialectic in students.     

Putting Faith Into Action: A Model for the North American Middle Class

Pluralism presents faith communities with the challenge of continuity and discontinuity in relation to the community's tradition. The educational question becomes: How do we initiate persons into the tradition of the faith community so that they will function as agents who can extend the tradition in creative ways in changing contexts? Play is one area of human activity that is concerned with what is and what might be. This paper explores the nature of the pretend play of young children, especially its “as‐if'” and “what‐if” dimensions. It suggests possibilities for using play in the education of children and adults.     

Towards the Idea of a World University

Could anyone reasonably oppose the idea that quality and excellence are essential to the university? However unlikely it seems, that is exactly what we would like to do in this article: we would like to reject the demand for quality and excellence in the university. We would like to arrive at a point at where the need for quality is no longer necessary. In this article, such a refusal will direct us to a proposal for using the spaces offered by the university and its teaching and research in a different way; in a way that transforms the university into a world university. This paper will argue that a world university is concentrated around attentive pools of worldly study. It is a university that has to invent new languages in order to answer the question “How can we live together?” In order to answer this question, and to be “present in the present,” we will clarify our argument that both acceptance and attention are needed in the world university. This position implies a kind of curiosity that is not driven by the “will to know” but by a caring attitude to what is happening now.     

LINKING MARXISM, GLOBALIZATION, AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPARATIVE AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGY POST 9/11

Abstract In a post‐9/11 world, where the politics of “us” versus “them” has reemerged under the umbrella of “terrorism,” especially in the United States, can we still envision an éducation sans frontières: a globalized and critical praxis of citizenship education in which there are no borders? If it is possible to conceive it, what might it look like? In this review essay, Awad Ibrahim looks at how these multilayered and complex questions have been addressed in three books: Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur’s Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism, Nel Noddings’s Educating Citizens for Global Awareness, and Gita Steiner‐Khamsi’s The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. Ibrahim concludes that, through creating a liminal, dialogical space between humanism, environmentalism, materialism, philosophy, and comparative education, the authors in these books offer a critical pedagogy in which éducation sans frontières is possible — a project that is as visionary as it is hopeful.     

Learning to Write: Plowing and Hoeing,Labor and Essaying

In this paper Amanda Fulford addresses the issue of student writing in the university, and explores how the increasing dominance of outcome‐driven modes of learning and assessment is changing the understanding of what it is to write, what is expected of students in their writing, and how academic writing should best be supported. The starting point is the increasing use of what are termed “technologies” of writing — “handbooks” for students that address issues of academic writing — that systematize, and smooth the work of writing in, Fulford argues, an unhelpful way. This leads to a reconsideration of what it means to write in the university, and what it is to be a student who writes. Fulford explores etymologically the concept of “writing” and suggests that it might be seen metaphorically as physical labor. Writing as physical labor is explored further through the agricultural metaphors in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and through Stanley Cavell's reading of that text. In making a distinction between writing‐as‐plowing and writing‐as‐hoeing, Fulford argues that some technologies of writing deny voice rather than facilitate it, and she concludes by offering a number of suggestions for the teaching and learning of writing in the university that emphasize the value of being lost (in one's subject and one's work) and finding one's own way out. These “lessons” are illustrated with reference to Thoreau's text Walden and to American literature and film.     

Factors which deter potential science/math teachers from teaching; changes necessary to ameliorate their concerns

In light of the perceived national need for more science and math teachers, this study was conceived to:

• 1. Identify “teaching oriented” students among freshmen at a mid-western engineering school, who have chosen NOT to become teachers;
• 2. Find out what reasons these “potential” science and math teachers have for deciding not to pursue teaching careers;
• 3. Determine what amelioration of these problems would be necessary for them to no longer be factors which would inhibit students from becoming teachers.

Of a random sample of 110 students drawn from a freshman class, 98 participated fully in the study. Each participant took Holland's Self-Directed Search to determine “teaching orientation” and author-constructed instruments to assess their concerns about teaching. Results showed “teaching oriented” students avoided teaching due to low starting salaries, lack of job security, low maximum salaries, not wanting to do the work teacher's do, poor job availability and discouragement by family and friends. Starting salaries of $21,693 and salaries of $32,600 for a teacher with a B.A. and 10 years experience were among the changes deemed necessary to make teaching attractive.     

SURVEY OF JEWISH EDUCATION IN NEW YORK CITY

This case study examines the contours of culturally relevant pedagogy in an undergraduate preservice teacher education program for Jewish women. The case describes how the assigned reading of Albarelli’s (2000) narrative of teaching in a Hasidic Jewish school, Teacha! Stories from a Yeshiva, disrupts the classroom community, diminishes student engagement with the course, and undermines student confidence in the instructor. This research explores what happens when “respect for” challenges “reflection about.” The study finds that differential cultural understandings surrounding the concept of “respect” mediate the discourse. The author raises questions about the ethics of social justice in religious teacher education, probes the poverty of educational reform in a landscape of nondiscussables, and offers strategies for navigating this tender terrain.     

Social Justice,Sport and Judaism: A Position Statement

ABSTRACT

Jewish teachings on social justice include the maxim attributed to Hillel the Elder in the Mishnah: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” This maxim indicates Jewish responses to experiencing anti-Semitism in the context of sports, as Jews have stood up for themselves through protest, cultural adaptation, and boycott, as illustrated in phenomena such as the creation of the HaKoach sports teams in Europe, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association basketball team in the United States, and international responses to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It illuminates how others have “been for them,” including Football 4 Peace, responses in Europe to Jewish-identified football teams and anti-Semitism. And it illustrates how the Jewish state, Jewish athletes and teams have responded to the call to stand up for others in American baseball and Israeli football.     

COMMENTS ON BOOKS AND WRITINGS

What are North American Jewish day schools doing when they engage in Israel education, what shapes their practices, and to what ends? In this article, we report on a multi-method study inspired by these questions. Our account is organized around an analytical model that helps distinguish between what we call the vehicles, intensifiers, and conditions of day school Israel education. Our discussion explores the possibility that when it comes to Israel education, schools have shifted from a paradigm of instruction to one of enculturation. This shift, we suggest, is indicative of a generalized anxiety about students' commitments to Israel and about their capacity to advocate for Israel when they “come of age” at university.     

The Changing Corporate Mind: Organizations,Vision, Missions,Purposes, and Indicators on the Move Toward Societal Payoffs

Where are the world's organizations headed? What do they see as their primary destination and contribution? What do they commit to deliver and to whom? How rigorous are they in defining their destinations? What label do they use to describe statements of their intended future? To find the answers to these and other questions, we examined 26 of the leading organizations internationally as well as 60 leading organizations in the United States. Based on this sample of world organizations, we found indications that many organizations see some aspect of societal good as basic to their future, while many others regard their own organization's well-being as what is most important. We find no clear favorite for what organizations label their statements of purpose: most use “mission” while some use “vision,” and some use “values” or “philosophy.” Few of the organizations in our sample state their intended destination in measurable performance terms. From these data, we discuss the implications in terms of an increasing emphasis in the literature on organizations having to deliver outputs that contribute to external clients and society. We also note that purpose statements must be accompanied by appropriate actions to achieve those intentions. In addition, we discuss how this move toward socially-responsive organizations is impacting the role of the performance technologist.