Developing holistic practice through reflection,action and theorising

This article outlines how I, as a primary teacher engaging with a self-study action research process, have come to a deeper understanding of my practice. It explains how I have also come to an understanding of why I work in the way I do; of how this understanding influences my work, and the significance of this new understanding. My work as a teacher frequently includes doing collaborative digital projects with my class. As I engaged in research on my practice, I initially experienced difficulties problematising this work. I struggled to achieve clarity not only with engaging in critical thinking but also with articulating my educational values. I found Mellor’s idea about ‘the struggle’ helpful as he explains how ‘the struggle’ is at the heart of the research process. My new understanding around these collaborative projects emerged in terms of holistic practice; clarifying my ontological values and learning to think critically. I am now generating an educational theory from my practice as I see my work as a process for developing spiritual and holistic approaches to learning and teaching. I conclude by outlining what I perceive to be the significance of my work and its potential implications for education.     

The ‘entrepreneurial university’, family and gender: changes and demands faced by fixed-term workers

Managerialism and neoliberal changes and demands influence the work and family lives of academics differently in different positions and contexts. In this article, I explore how Finnish academics on short fixed-term contracts have been treated, and how they interpret recent changes and their effects on their work and private lives. I ask how the demands and changes are gendered and what consequences they have for work–family balance and gender equality, as well as whether the changes have been internalised or resisted. Managerialism seems to create new ways to govern oneself and to approach academic work, home, children and gender. I argue that these profound changes are veiled by more visible reforms that seem to threaten academic autonomy, such as time surveillance.     

Writing the queer self: Using autobiography to mediate inclusive teacher education in Canada

Writing the queer self involves locating the self within a broad understanding of queer that recognises a spectrum of sex, sexual and gendered subjects. In this article, I discuss how I write the queer self to link the personal to my positional practice as a gay teacher educator. I overview my work with Agape, which is a focus group that I initiated in my university's teacher education programme to explore sex, sexual and gender differences in education and culture. I explore how I link my queer autobiography to the professional and the pedagogical, and how I use it to engender deliberations about queer presence, representation and place in education. I conclude by speaking on the importance of doing this work as an ethical project for social justice and educational transformation.     

Speaking of Tongues

In this paper I reflect on claims that artefacts, as alternatives to texts, can provide an effective means of access to learning. With reference to the work of Walter Benjamin, I analyse the role the “aura” of a ritual object played in engaging a group of Year 6 students, all of whom experienced various degrees of delayed literacy. Drawing on Levi‐Strauss' essay “On the Effectiveness of Symbols”, I consider how far a unit of work involving aspects of a ritual against slander allowed the students to develop their understanding of how perfomative language might function.     

The Role of Language &; Discourse in the Investigation of Privilege: Using Participatory Action Research to Discuss Theory,Develop Methodology, &; Interrupt Power

Rooted in feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and participatory action research (PAR), I partnered with four faculty and four students at an elite, private, college preparatory day school for boys in order to examine bullying. In this article I closely examine the role of language and discourse when conducting counter hegemonic research with people who are predominantly privileged and within institutions designed to reproduce those privileges. I briefly describe the co-construction of our theory and instrument to illustrate that our close attention to language in regards to bullying both helped us understand our work and changed how we went about conducting the study. I describe how our strategic use of language to broadly define bullying helped us capture interesting data and interrupt power. And finally, I discuss our political use of language to others and suggest that while it paved a safer space for us to conduct our work it also may have restricted our work from having the power to resist co-optation and promote sustainable, systemic change.     

THE TWELFTH ANNUAL CONVENTION

This article offers a response to two provocative questions about the relationship of theology to religious education posed by Norma Thompson in her Presidential address given at the annual meeting of APRRE in 1978. I offer contemporary answers to these questions from the perspective of a theological educator. First, I show how feminist theory and practices are transforming theological education. Second, I discuss how feminist pedagogy and theologies inform my teaching as a university professor. Third, I show how the themes of justice, dialogue, and imagination that emerge from feminist practices shape my work and the learning of my undergraduate theology students.     

Collaboration and contrived collegiality: Revisiting Hargreaves in the age of accountability

Andy Hargreaves is internationally renowned for his work on many topics related to educational change. His work on how educational change shapes teachers’ work, particularly with respect to teacher collaboration, is well exemplified in his award-winning 1994 volume, Changing Teachers, Changing Times: Teachers’ Work and Culture in the Postmodern Age. In this volume, he taught us the important difference between collaborative cultures and contrived collegiality. This article will bring Hargreaves’ ideas about teacher collaboration to bear as I investigate a current educational reform movement: data-driven decision making. I describe how two school systems integrated teacher collaboration as an important feature of their movements towards using data, and I explain the consequences of their efforts. I close by raising critical issues for educators and researchers to address as we consider the role of teacher collaboration in the age of accountability.     

Youths’ and scientists’ authoring of and positioning within science and scientists’ work

What would it take for youth to come to see science as a source of inspiration, as something intriguing and valuable, and as a world including them as active agents and legitimate members irrespective of who they are or who they want to become? I attempt to find some answers to this question by listening in on what youth have to say about science and scientists, talk occasioned through the conduct of oral histories of scientists and reflective work about visits to their work places, conducted by a small group of youth participating in an inner-city summer gardening program. I examine how youth and scientists position each other through talk and action and how they co-construct and deconstruct science and scientists’ work. I show how creating spaces within which youths’ images are validated and taken as resources for further co-construction and deconstruction of the world of science can lead to the development of broad notions of science that make insider status a possibility for them, whether as informed citizens or scientists.     

Peace as an event,peace as utopia: a re-imagining of peace and its implications for peace education and development

This paper aims to provide a new approach to peace in order to contribute to a theoretically informed approach to peace education and development practice. Arguing that liberal peace can be counter-productive and can actually betray peace, I offer an alternative approach in order to contribute to thinking on peace for educators and development practitioners. Introducing the theory of peace that I developed in my recent Ph.D., I explore how utopian and post-structural theory conceptualises peace as an open-ended promise, facilitating alternative thinking about peace and how to engage with it. I then discuss the implications this has for praxis and finish by looking at how the work of translating peace is an important aspect of peace education and development.     

Neoliberal and disciplinary environmentality and ‘sustainable seafood’ consumption: storying environmentally responsible action

This article invokes a neoliberal and disciplinary governmentality lens in a political ecology of education framework to analyze educational programming at Long Beach, California’s Aquarium of the Pacific. I begin by briefly describing governmentality as Foucault and neo-Foucauldian scholars have theorized the concept, followed by a discussion of the emergence of green governmentality and environmentality in political ecology. Next, I invoke a political ecology of education framework informed by neoliberal and disciplinary environmentality to analyze institutional and teaching practice at the Aquarium. In this analysis, I demonstrate how the institution’s funding structure, placement within the entertainment markets of the southern California area, and commitment to ocean conservation education all influence how the Aquarium conceptualizes itself and its work. I focus on the case of the Blue Cavern Show and the Seafood for the Future program, which work in tandem to define a problem (declining fish stocks; possible seafood shortages) and then structure a neoliberal solution through the market (sustainable seafood consumption). I conclude by discussing the implications of this research for environmental education, which include unpacking how neoliberalism impacts teaching practice, especially as it relates to notions of framing environmentally responsible action.     

高校学生教育管理工作现存问题及对策研究

随着社会主义市场经济的发展，当今社会对大学生的要求越来越高，它不仅要求大学生具有扎实的专业知识，而且要求大学生具有良好的身体和心理素质、较强的实践和动手能力。培养学生学会做人、学会求知、学会劳动、学会生活、学会发展。如何培养和造就高素质、创造性思维的人才，给我们的教育思想、教育观念、教育内容、教育方法等提出了挑战，也给高校学生教育管理工作提出了新的机遇和挑战。     

Contract Research,Curricular Reform,and Situated Selves: Between Social Justice and Commercialized Knowledge

Using a critical ethnographic perspective, I describe how social scientists actively transition into the evaluation industry in a reform environment that is marked by increased privatization of all aspects of public education. I do this by exploring adaptations that contract evaluators use to enhance a sense of personal connection to their work (i.e., contribution to social change) and the ways in which macropolitical interests intersect with those personal stories. I close with a discussion on possible implications for social scientific knowledge work.     

Learning to Think of Learning to Teach as Situated: A self-study

Teacher educators are expected to help their student teachers learn how to teach. How teacher educators do this depends on their beliefs, particularly on how they think about teacher learning. Earlier in my work as a teacher educator I thought of teacher learning as a psychological process or phenomenon and this view guided my work with my student teachers. Subsequently, I have been drawn to pragmatist and sociocultural views that portray human thinking and acting as intimately linked to the physical, social and cultural environment. Adopting such views helped me to see teacher learning in a new light, less as a mental issue and more as a social and cultural issue. Here I reconstruct my transformation of coming to see learning to teach as situated.     

‘Measuring Up’? Assessment and students with disabilities in the modern university

In this article, I ask how university students with disabilities negotiate with staff arrangements for alternative assessment practices. I draw on three case studies using a personal pronoun perspective to challenge the conventional view that educational policy and teaching practice are forms of rational action. I demonstrate how the lives of students and staff are typically characterised by unexpected events, disorder, emotion and prejudice. The analytic perspective offered here establishes how meanings, intentions and different viewpoints and alliances emerge as social actors work to create specific faculty and institution cultures. The case studies also reveal what does and what does not work – some of the obstacles – and what needs to be done if we are serious about equity and inclusive education. They include practical assistance in recognising the specific requirements of students with disabilities and how to design alternative assessment for students with specific ‘conditions’. I argue that professional development and specific techniques in curriculum design are needed. Some staff also require help in recognising their policy and legal obligations. A cultural change which identifies and challenges prejudice is a larger task if universities are to become places in which equal opportunity principles and inclusive education are present and actively practised.     

Methods of Enlarging English Vocabulary

In order to enlarge English vocabulary,we need to have some methods.I’d like to share my experience with beginners how I enlarge English vocabulary when when I am learning English.It is a long process and needs hard work and patience.     

Admitting Impediments: or things to do with bodies in the classroom

This paper indicates how new theorising of the body can be brought to bear on pedagogical work as an erotic field. I make a case that the body of the teacher needs to be remembered in writing about teaching and learning, because it produces desire in pedagogical events, for good as well as ill. I show the ways in which recent work on corporeality counters mainstream educational writing about students and teachers. I then comment on some brief accounts of the experience of learning, using some of these concepts as a framework for my analysis.     

Extending theorisations of the global teacher: care work,gender, and street-level policies

This article is concerned with teachers’ negotiation of global transitions premised on improving educational opportunity with implications for professionalism. The study blends sociology of gender, work, and organisations and gender policy analysis to theorise teachers’ policy negotiations. I explore how 20 Argentine teachers mediate 3 programmes’ demands for care work. Policy as practice and street-level bureaucracy are applied to data to interrogate for gendered boundary work. I propose the addition of care work, gender, and a street-level view to Maguire’s global teacher.     

Exploring the Metafictive in Elementary Students' Writing

Although some researchers have examined students' literary understandings of and responses to books with metafictive characteristics, few have explored how elementary students incorporate metafictive devices into their writing. In this article I analyse the stories and books created by a class of Grade 5 students and discuss the metafictive devices evident in their work. In addition to considering how the literature students read and how the classroom interpretive community influenced the students' stories/books, I discuss some broader issues about the significance of students reading and writing metafictive texts.     

关于豫南地区全面推进素质教育的调查

豫南地区中小学在推进素质教育方面已呈现出较好的发展态势，但还存在一些障碍，较突出的有思想障碍、理论障碍，教师障碍、制度障碍，条件障碍，为此，我们提出了7项改革基本思路，一是进一步转变教育思想，树立正确的教育观，人才观和质量观，二是加大豫南地区素质教育理论研究力度，构建现代教育理论体系；三是抓教学教育环节改革；四是努力建设一支高素质的教师队伍；五是改革教育制度，六是构建人才的立交桥；七是加强领导，依法治教，营造素质教育的良好环境。     

Truthful Fictions: How Dreams Can Help You Write

This article makes a case for recording and using dreams in the teaching of writing. Calling on some well-known statements of Freud and on some recent research, I attempt to show how dreams can provide writers with a route to their unconscious. I also illustrate the role of dreams in furnishing writers with inspiration and source material. I provide examples of writing, both my own poems and extracts from the work of Coleridge, Byatt, Kafka, Blanchot and Murakami amongst others, to show how dreams, the experience of dreaming and dream-like imagery have been used successfully in literature.