Pedagogies of Muslim feminisms: reflections on faith,space and citizenship

In this article, I offer a qualitative study of three spaces created by and for young Muslim women in Toronto, Canada: an after-school drop-in programme for Muslim girls, a Somali women’s group and a Muslim women’s collective. I focus on data gathered from interviews of seven Muslim women in their 20s who created the spaces, which offered refuge from the racism and Islamophobia in Canadian schools and society and from the patriarchal forms of social control in their families and communities. Drawing on feminist and ethnographic approaches to citizenship studies and a critical faith-centred epistemology, I consider how these spaces function as loci for teaching and learning self and community, building communities of resistance and articulating new notions of the political and of citizenship.     

Toward multimodal inquiry: opportunities,challenges and implications of multimodality for research and scholarship

In this article, we suggest that we are witnessing a challenge to the hegemony of text-based knowledge in academic scholarship, brought about by newly available modes of expression, and a cultural shift in our notions of reading and writing, authorship, and networked knowledge production. The central question we address here concerns the implications of widening our ideas of acceptable forms of inquiry, analysis and representation in academic scholarship. As a collective of scholar-practitioners exploring new modes of expression and working both within and outside the formal structures of academia, we argue for the increasing significance of multimodal research in the contemporary context of academic inquiry. By more equitably valuing different ways of thinking, knowing and communicating, multimodal research can facilitate wider and more diverse participation in the production of knowledge, offer a more nuanced and ethical mode of inquiry, emphasize different ways of knowing and connecting, and make scholarship more broadly accessible beyond academic contexts. Here, we analyze the key opportunities facilitated by multimodal inquiry, as well as the obstacles that stand in the way of a wider adoption of this type of research in higher education.     

The scholarship of teaching and learning: challenges for Malaysian academics

This paper explores the adoption of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) by 10 Malaysian university academics. SoTL was part of a pioneering sector-wide initiative for improving teaching and learning. The qualitative study showed that there had been no true learning phase for SoTL because academics had high expectations of rapid success in their new research area, including journal publication. Most of their peers did not understand or value SoTL and so SoTL researchers established minority self-sustaining groups across disciplines and universities. SoTL brought new ways of thinking about teaching that were transformational for the teacher but not necessarily welcomed by the students. Students resisted radical change, and teachers were drawn back to educational practices they no longer valued. SoTL was experienced in a hierarchical educational culture where questioning of self and others was difficult and this hindered teacher development. We conclude with recommendations about realistic expectations and the importance of social learning for those considering SoTL for academic development.     

《爱默生、福勒和梭罗的超验主义友谊观》节选翻译

文章对爱默生、福勒和梭罗的超验主义友谊观进行了相关分析。     

The language of friendship and identity: children’s communication choices in an interfaith exchange

The development of partnerships between schools and school children of different religious and cultural backgrounds is currently being promoted at national level in an attempt to encourage social cohesion in ethnically and religiously diverse societies. This article reports on one such partnership, a programme of email communication between children from primary schools in Leicester and East Sussex. It uses concepts of presence and space to analyse the different linguistic and paralinguistic devices children employ to construct their identities as friends and as representatives of their communities, and to project these identities across a cultural divide. Evaluation of the children’s language choices identifies tensions and limitations as well as possibilities. The article makes use of Derrida’s deconstruction of hospitality as it questions a too ready adoption of the discourse of friendship for children’s intercultural encounter, and suggests that the development of a more sophisticated language of interest, politeness and respect provides them with a firmer foundation for positive and productive dialogue with religious difference.     

An assessment arms race and its fallout: high-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship

This research questions the impact of assessment on university teaching and learning in circumstances where all student work is graded. Sixty-two students and lecturers were interviewed to explore their experiences of assessment at an institution that had adopted a modular course structure and largely unregulated numbers of internal assessments. Lecturers rewarded student work with grades and controlled study behaviour with assessment. In some situations it was possible to experience hundreds of graded assessments in an academic year. Students were single-minded when it came to grades and would not work without them. These conditions contributed to competition for student attention and a grading arms race between academics and subjects. In this context, the spaces for achieving certain educational objectives, such as fostering self-motivated learners, were marginalised. Both students and lecturers were unsatisfied with this situation, but neither group could envisage radical change. Students were generally happy to accumulate small marks, while being irritated and stressed by frequent grading. Lecturers were aware of better practices but felt trapped by circumstances. The idea of slow scholarship is introduced to encourage a re-think of such assessment practices, support a positive shift in assessment culture and contribute to the theories of assessment.     

Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers: the time of friendship

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an introduction to the enduring friendship between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers. It shows how their intellectual development as public educators was sustained by their ongoing dialogue which flourished not in spite of but because of their huge differences of circumstance and personality. This friendship between two renowned scholars raises – by implication at least – the question as to what part friendship plays in academic and intellectual development and to what extent institutions, in their administrative systems and practices, encourage or even allow for the kind of friendship that Arendt and Jaspers shared. The paper does not seek to address these questions directly, but rather to ground them in the particularities of a unique correspondence between two major public intellectuals and to highlight their relevance for those currently working in the higher education sector.     

Enact,discard, and transform: a critical race feminist perspective on professional socialization among tenured Black female faculty

Through an analysis informed by critical race feminism, this paper examines the intersection of professional socialization and agency among tenured Black female faculty at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Professional socialization entails the transmission and reproduction of professional norms. However, within PWIs, professional socialization emanates from a legacy of race and gender exclusion. Thus, normative conceptualizations of professional development may not adequately address how Black women negotiate institutional cues to define their professorial role. The findings show that a three-prong model of engagement: enacting, discarding, and transforming institutional norms, comprised the participants’ socialization process; agency played an important role in their career success. Implications for facilitating agency among Black female faculty and similarly situated groups are discussed.     

Applying the scholarship of teaching and learning: student perceptions,behaviours and success online and face-to-face

This study compares student perceptions, learning behaviours and success in online and face-to-face versions of a Principles of Microeconomics course. It follows a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) approach by using a cycle of empirical analysis, reflection and action to improve the learning experience for students. The online course design involves 58 interactive narrated online modules, interactive online quizzes and biweekly online meetings with the instructor via video and voice-over-IP technology. Findings indicate that schedule flexibility motivates students to choose the online course format. Students in both learning environments felt they had high-quality communication with the instructor, while online students indicated limited peer-to-peer communication. Online students report studying more at home than face-to-face students, but not enough to compensate for the time face-to-face students spend in class. Reflecting on the findings, the authors suggest actions to improve the online course experience.     

Reflection on teaching and the scholarship of teaching: Focus on science instructors

Summary Reflection on teaching in higher education remains poorly understood. This exploratory study had three goals. First, to test, empirically yet in an exploratory way, the applicability of a particular model of reflection. Second, to identify objective indicators of reflection on knowledge about teaching with the intent to make the process of reflection more concrete, visible, and its outcomes valid. Third, in line with the exploratory nature of the study, to shed light on some variables that might be linked to observed differences in reflection, which could be investigated more systematically through future research. The model of reflection guiding the study was based on Mezirow’s transformative learning theory. It distinguishes three kinds of reflection: on content, process and premises. These take place within three domains of knowledge about teaching: instruction, pedagogy, and curriculum. Thirty-six instructors of science participated in a semi-structured interview based on the model and completed a repertory grid, which incorporated their beliefs about teaching as identified through the Approaches of Teaching Inventory (ATI). While all instructors showed evidence of reflection that were in line with the model, differences were observed in the extent or kind of reflection they engaged in. Across all three knowledge domains, premise reflection was observed the least often. Results suggested that years of experience and beliefs about teaching might play a role in the extent to which academics are inclined to engage in reflection. The study also identified concrete indicators of reflection, which could be helpful for academic staff evaluation.     

(White) women on the move: Suffrage memory and the 1977 International Women’s Year Conference

ABSTRACT

This essay examines how the 1977 International Women’s Year Conference (IWY), a historic gathering of women in Houston, Texas—tasked to put forward a series of policy recommendations, many informed by a feminist perspective—undercut its own intersectional impulse by leveraging collective memory of U.S. suffrage activism. I analyze the conference program, a document distributed to every conference attendee, that called up early woman’s movement history and suffrage memory in its language, ephemera, and image to constitute a certain narrative for the 1977 IWY audience. I argue that by linking the IWY conference to a specific narrative of women’s rights and suffrage activism, the planners made the conference more explicitly political and feminist, and imbued the event with historical significance and legitimacy. At the same time, the deployment of suffrage memory ultimately positioned white women as mobile and engaged in social movement while effacing Black women and women of color who had been involved in suffrage activism, thus rendering them immobile, invisible, silent, and locked in the past. I conclude by examining a concurrent counter-narrative, one not included in the program, as a productive, intersectional rupture in suffrage memory at IWY.     

Developing Reflexive identities through collaborative,interdisciplinary and precarious work: the experience of early career researchers

This paper explores the experiences of 24 Early Career Researchers working in interdisciplinary and precarious employment conditions in which they are managing collaborations with multiple partners beyond the university as part of the AHRC’s ‘Connected Communities’ Programme. These conditions emerge from conflicting sources – from critical and emancipatory moves in knowledge production as well as from globalising neoliberal education policies. The paper draws on Archer’s concept of reflexive identity to identify four different reflexive orientations developed by ECRs in these conditions: the disciplinarian, the freelancer, the worker bee and the social activist.     

The scholarship of teaching and learning: A Special Niche for Faculty at Comprehensive Universities?

We investigated the involvement of faculty members at comprehensive universities in scholarship of teaching and learning publishing activities in four disciplines. Compared to to their publishing rates in research-oriented journals, comprehensive university faculty members were more involved in publishing articles and serving on editorial boards for pedagogical journals. Over the past three decades, the relative involvement in the scholarship of teaching and learning journals by faculty members at comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges has increased whereas participation by faculty members at research universities has declined.     

Children,families, and feminism: Perspectives on teaching

Feminist theorists are raising questions about assumptions still common in the fields of family and child development which are relevant to early childhood educators. This article discusses why content and pedagogy work together in feminist classrooms and reviews research on the stages that many students and instructors move through as they learn about ways in which women continue to struggle for equal status in modern American society.     

Institutionalising campus diversity in South African higher education: Review of diversity scholarship and diversity education

Increasingly the social, educational, cultural,linguistic, religious and racial diversity ofSouth African society is finding expressionwithin South African institutions of highereducation. Consequently, ``diversity'',``diversity issues'' and ``diversification'', havebecome part of the education debate and policy,and pose new challenges to South Africantertiary institutions. Most institutions areattempting to respond to these challengeswithin the context of a transformation processwhich impacts on every aspect of academic lifefrom student access and support, outreachprogrammes, staff recruitment and retention, toacademic programme development, research,scholarship and the social and learningenvironment on campus. This paper looks at howSouth African higher education institutionshave met these challenges. It highlights howthe ideas, initiatives or practices arounddiversity have been appropriated and made partof the mainstream intellectual and academicdiscourses. It also investigates the social andepistemological conditions of possibility formeaningful scholarship and curriculum practicesin addressing the challenges posed by socialdiversity on campuses. More specific questionsin this regard include: What counts asknowledge in diversity scholarship? Whoproduces and disseminates it? Who accesses itor utilises it? What is its space in thecurricula?     

自由主义女性主义与激进女性主义科学观浅探

自由主义女性主义与激进女性主义作为女性主义阵营中的两大主要流派,在女性主义理论与批判中的地位举足轻重。它们进入科学领域,分别形成自己独特的对于科学的不同看法。本文拟从自由主义女性主义科学观与激进女性主义科学观的渊源、对科学的批判以及所产生的意义这三方面进行简要剖析。     

《小姐你早》：女性主义绝唱

《小姐你早》表现了典型的女性主义观念,张扬了反对当代男权中心主义的思想,小说的理想主义叙事和充满激情的评论干预,表明池莉已扬弃了“新写实主义”。     

走进弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙的精神小屋——试析《到灯塔去》所诠释的女性现和生死观

在《到灯塔去》中,作者从女权主义视角着力打造了两个女性人物——拉姆齐夫人和画家莉丽.布里斯科。前者集中了博爱宽厚、甘于吃苦的女性气质,后者体现了作者独立自尊、知性超脱的女性观念。这两个人物的精神世界构建了一座理想的20世纪女性的精神小屋,体现了作者对女性现状的独特反思及其独到的美学观和人生观。虽然这座精神小屋由于设计者伍尔芙本人特殊的生活环境和脆弱的身心条件,弥漫着淡淡的忧伤,但它浓缩了英国上层中产阶级在第一次世界大战前后和两次世界大战期间这段动荡时期的精神世界,反映了英国的社会和文化,蕴涵着作者的社会历史感和对两性身份与创作等问题的深刻思考。