Knowing Inquiry as Practice and Theory: Developing a Pedagogical Framework with Elementary School Teachers

In this paper, we characterize the inquiry practices of four elementary school teachers by means of a pedagogical framework. Our study revealed core components of inquiry found in theoretically-driven models as well as practices that were regarded as integral to the success of day-to-day science teaching in Singapore. This approach towards describing actual science inquiry practices—a surprisingly neglected area—uncovered nuances in teacher instructions that can impact inquiry-based lessons as well as contribute to a practice-oriented perspective of science teaching. In particular, we found that these teachers attached importance to (a) preparing students for investigations, both cognitively and procedurally; (b) iterating pedagogical components where helping students understand and construct concepts did not follow a planned linear path but involved continuous monitoring of learning; and (c) synthesizing concepts in a consolidation phase. Our findings underscore the dialectical relationship between practice-oriented knowledge and theoretical conceptions of teaching/learning thereby helping educators better appreciate how teachers adapt inquiry science for different contexts.     

Recent Work on Flourishing as the Aim of Education: A Critical Review

Flourishing, understood along semi-Aristotelian lines, has re-emerged recently as an account of the ideal aim of education, for instance, in works by educational philosophers Brighouse, White and de Ruyter. This article aims at critically reviewing this new paradigm by subjecting it to philosophical and educational scrutiny. Throughout I compare and contrast this paradigm with Aristotelian flourishing and explore the specific role of teachers as facilitators of students’ flourishing and sense of meaning.     

Learning from Rookie Mistakes: Critical Incidents in Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching Science to Teachers

While there is a growing literature focused on doctoral preparation for teaching about science teaching, rarely have recommendations extended to preparation for teaching science content to teachers. We three doctoral students employ self-study as a research methodology to investigate our developing pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science to teachers during a mentored internship in an elementary teacher professional development program. With our mentor, we examine critical incidents in the experience that supported new insights about teaching teachers and about ways in which beginning teacher educators need to develop their existing pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science to students in order to teach science effectively to teachers. We emphasize ways in which doctoral internships can support this learning and how our respective cultures shaped our interactions with and perceptions of teachers as learners.     

A Layered Approach to Critical Friendship as a Means to Support Pedagogical Innovation in Pre-service Teacher Education

In this article we describe and interpret how two distinct layers of critical friendship were used to support a pedagogical innovation in pre-service teacher education. The innovation, Learning about Meaningful Physical Education (LAMPE), focuses on ways to teach future teachers to foster meaningful experiences for learners in physical education. Critical friendship was applied in two ways: (1) the first two authors served as critical friends to each other as they taught their respective teacher education courses using LAMPE, and (2) the third author acted as a meta-critical friend, providing support for and critique of the first two authors’ development and enactment of the innovation. Over two years, data were gathered from reflective journal entries, emails, recorded Skype calls, and teaching observations. The two layers of critical friendship held significant benefits in advancing and supporting the development of the innovation while also contributing to the professional learning of all participants. Analysis of the first year’s data showed that we entered the critical friendship without thoroughly considering what we each hoped to give and take from the relationship or acknowledging the potential problems that might unfold. In the second year, guided by suggestions from our meta-critical friend, we took a more rigorous inquiry stance as critical friends, contributing contentious feedback and pushing each other beyond our personal and pedagogical comfort zones. This led to a noticeable improvement in our professional learning about teacher education practices and advanced the development of the LAMPE innovation.     

Rationality as a goal of education

Those who believe education should involve more than learning facts often stress either (a) development or (b) thinking skills. A focus on development as a goal of education typically entails a conception of knowledge as organismic, holistic, and internally generated. In contrast, thinking skills programs commonly assume a mechanistic, reductionist perspective in which good thinking consists of some finite number of directly teachable skills. A conception of rationality as a goal of eduction is proposed that incorporates the complementary strengths and avoids the limitations of the developmental and thinking skills approaches. Rationality is defined as the self-reflective, intentional, and appropriate coordination and use of genuine reasons in generating and justifying beliefs and behavior. Philosophically, rationality is a justifiable goal of education, not only because it is a means to worthwhile ends but because it is an important end in itself and because it can be promoted via nonindoctrinative means. A psychological account of progressive rationality is provided that postulates continuing multiple interactions of (a) domain-specific developmental stages, (b) the learning of specific thinking skills, and (c) content-specific knowledge. Suggestions are made for fostering rationality at various educational levels. Finally, it is argued that the proposed conception of rationality as a goal of education complements and clarifies a variety of other educational goals.     

教育计划的目的理性与人的箱格化

在特定情况下对不可缺少的细节做出安排的计划,是人在对生活经验的体悟和积淀中逐渐形成而表现出来的. 极富理性和睿智的行为方式,但人自身无意识的有限理性误导了人对行为方式的自我选择,从而使计划的目的理性和人对计划惯常的思维方式,遮蔽了计划的局限性. 人永远都是一个既不能被箱格化也不能被重新制造的整体,教育计划的制定只有时刻保持对事实的清晰认识以及对不可计划力量的充分意识,将人从依赖单纯的计划选择自身道路回归到充分体现了教育精神价值的自由人的本源上来,才能从本真意义上规避并消解教育计划的桎梏.     

文学批评中的个人情绪化与批判指向的偏错——论金庸武侠小说的批判中所存在的问题

大约在上个世纪末起,中国掀起了一波涉及金庸、武侠小说、金庸热及金庸武侠小说等现象的批评热潮,而在相当多的有关金庸武侠小说的批判中却存在着个人情绪化突出,批判的矛头指向偏错等问题.许多知名人士或学者在试图去批判金庸武侠小说时实质上却是在批判武侠小说,批判金庸,批判与金庸武侠小说有关的各种社会现象.他们所要批判的对象与其实际批判的矛头不相对应,似乎是南辕北辙、“声东击西”.     

School Principal as Pedagogical Leader

The position and duties of a school principal should be rapidly changing along with the changes in the policy of school development. School‐based curriculum and staff development are the main components of the present policy. If an individual school is the basic unit of development then the role of the principal is crucial in leading pedagogical activities within the unit. This study, carried out in Finland, attempts to consider how principals see their work now. The results show that the principals’ still see their most important tasks in organisation (resource provider) and in maintaining a good climate in school.     

论我国教师教育事业的发展趋势

论述开放性的教师教育在我国教育发展中的历史必然性.指出教师教育要刚性与柔性结合,学科教育与从师教育分立,理论学习与能力训练并举.并提出教师教育要处理好几个关系,从制度设计层面提供了几种趋利避害的方法.     

后殖民主义与批判教育学: 教育的目标在于培养批判精神

从20世纪60年代发展起来的批判教育学的主要精神在于把学生培养成为具有批判精神的独立的政治主体。后殖民理论研究由于揭露了帝国主义文化霸权的实质、重新论述边缘与中心的关系而为批判教育学的研究提供了理论框架。以此框架为基础,批判教育学发展出一系列的原则,如教育应当与政治相联系,理性与知识的概念需要重新解释,教育学需要通过打破学科界限来创造新的知识,差异与伦理在教育学中应得到特别关注,等等。这些原则的核心目标是培养学生的批判精神,使其能更好地服务于民主的社会。     

Developing Science Pedagogical Content Knowledge Through Mentoring Elementary Teachers

Elementary teachers are typically hesitant to teach science. While a limited knowledge of science content is a reason for this, limited science pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has emerged as another reason in recent research. This study constitutes two case studies of a professional development program for elementary teachers involving mentoring by a university professor. The mentor took the role of a critical friend in joint planning and teaching of science. The study examines the nature of the mentoring relationship and reports the type of teacher learning that occurred, with a particular focus on the teachers’ development of science PCK.

中学数学课堂教学行为关键性层级研究

“关键教学行为”层级是对课堂教学行为重要性进行分级与研究.探寻关键教学行为对于抓住教学研究与改进中的核心问题,促进有效教学具有积极意义.基于中学数学课堂教学词典(Lexicon)项目资料,经专家论证,得到124个教学行为.借助CIT (Critical Incident Technique)技术,结合专家评判,提炼出16个关键教学行为.进一步运用问卷调查和访谈,得出中学数学课堂上关键性最高的A层教学行为:师生互动、教师提问、教师展示、学生听讲以及学生做题.其余教师讲解、学生讲解、学生提问、合作学习等11个关键教学行为属于B层;其余108个教学行为归入C层级.     

Finding Voices in a Changing World: Standard Language Education as a Site for Developing Critical Literacies

What are the “key competencies” needed in our time? What literacy is needed to make students active participants in their societies and contributors to changing cultures? This article offers a contribution to the ongoing discussion about these questions. It takes as its point of departure the “key competencies” formulated in the OECD program Definition and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo) in response to educational challenges in a changing world, and the five “basic skills” to be developed in all school subjects from year 1 to year 13 in the Norwegian curriculum of 2006 (LK06). It argues, first, for the need to understand “basic skills” in the perspective of DeSeCo “key competencies”, with a focus, as formulated in DeSeCo, on using tools interactively, acting autonomously, and interacting in heterogeneous groups. Secondly, the aims and purposes of the school subject “Norwegian” in Norway, as formulated in LK06, are discussed in relation to the aims of the DeSeCo key competencies and the concepts of critical literacy and Bildung. Thirdly, the article offers a discussion of how standard language education can become a site for the development of key competencies and critical literacies, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas about utterances and voices and Roz Ivanic's about discoursal identities, and talking about the StLE subject as a potential public space, a stage, a resonance room, and a cultural workshop. Finally, some concluding remarks are made about the crucial role of the teacher in such a curriculum, and about the role of standard language education in relation to other school subjects.     

Educational Research as a Form of Democratic Rationality

Educational Research is commonly regarded as a rational pursuit aimed at the production of objective knowledge. Researchers are expected to avoid value bias by detaching themselves from the normative conceptions of education that shape practice in schools and classrooms, and by casting themselves in the role of the impartial spectator. It is assumed that, as a rational pursuit, educational research is not directly concerned with changing practice but simply with discovering facts about it.
This paper claims that it is possible to construct a view of educational research as a form of rational and disciplined inquiry that does not depend on any underpinning spectator theory of knowledge. Nor, the paper claims, does it imply any underpinning foundational principles of rational action and choice. Rather it implies a form of disciplined conversation in which reasons for action are scrutinised, critiqued and modified without resort to foundational principles of rationality. Drawing particularly on the work of John Dewey, Richard Rorty and Amartya Sen, the paper casts educational research as a practical science—a form of action research—that is underpinned by a democratic conception of rationality. In doing so, it contrasts educational research , shaped by a pragmatic theory of knowledge, with research on education that is shaped by a spectator theory.     

Teachers' Pedagogical Competence as a Prerequisite for Entering the Profession

Since 1980, the recruitment of teachers in many countries has followed a systematic certification procedure, i.e. a selection procedure according to criteria set by the State which are considered the minimum qualification for entrance into the profession. The term used in the last few years to define the desired level of qualification of teachers is competence. The purpose of this article is two-fold: a) to review the relevant literature and research in order to record those qualifications that ensure teachers' pedagogical competence at international level, and b) to present the Greek case — a State that evaluates teachers' pedagogical competence before they become a part of the teaching profession — in order to reveal the strengths and limitations of this evaluation process. In brief, assessing teachers' pedagogical competence is a difficult and complex procedure, as competence is ensured through the acquisition of multiple — in terms of amplitude and content — qualifications. Assessing the acquisition of these qualifications is based, to a great extent, on the procedures followed and the practices of evaluation adopted. Given that contemporary research has triggered a relevant discussion in a context of pedagogical knowledge that secures pedagogical competence, assessing the acquisition of this knowledge is, to a certain degree, possible. The evaluation of pedagogical and teaching skills and opinions is more difficult, and the monitoring of viewpoints, attitudes and beliefs, as well as capabilities, is even more difficult.     

教育学理论发展的道路及其动力探源

教育学理论的发展理应走上一条内生之路、人文之路,这条道路就生成于教育学在发展中所遭际的诸种矛盾和冲突中.体系化与问题化的冲突,教育理论与教育实践的紧张、教育学化与非教育学化的危机,这三对矛盾紧密缠结在一起,共同干预着教育学理论发展的各个转向.它们既是教育学理论生死存亡的转换枢纽,又是其发展动力的生发之所.     

Pedagogical Equilibrium as a Lens for Understanding Teaching about Teaching

This article looks closely at a teacher inquiry group and the dilemmas that emerged during the first year of facilitating the group. The author encountered a number of unforeseen dilemmas that challenged previous understanding of teacher inquiry, its processes, and purposes. The author moved from viewing the process of facilitation of teacher inquiry as a “dilemma free” process, to a complex undertaking that continually raises questions about issues of authority and expertise. This article underscores the important role that facilitation plays in teacher inquiry groups and the complexity of the role of facilitator. It also highlights the important role a facilitator can play in allowing teachers to consider how to best improve their practice to advance both English language learners’ content knowledge and their English language skills.