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.     

A Review of “Interreligious Learning”

This article considers Religious Education (RE) from the perspective of socialization theory. After clarifying the concept of socialization, an understanding of socialization processes, requiring the simultaneous development of both a personal and a social identity, is linked with RE. The development of both a personal and a social identity calls for hermeneutic and critical reflective skills, which may be acquired in RE classes. Therefore, RE is an important means of socializing children and youths that may have great civic value and has a rightful place in the school curriculum. The article concludes with the argument that schools with an open religious identity are best suited to provide the type of RE advocated here.     

A Case Study of Cross‐curricular Practice through Partnership

This paper is concerned with a curriculum development project, framed around the cross‐curricular themes as suggested by the NCC guidelines (1991‐a‐f). It is structured as a teacher partnership experience involving close collaboration between university tutors, student teachers and practising teachers in a local school. From the university's perspective, the curriculum development project grew out of the review and evaluation of the education courses which forms 50% of the four year BA/BSc Hons (Education) degree offered for students preparing to be secondary school teachers. From the school's perspective it offered an opportunity to develop a more formal incorporation of cross‐ curriculum themes into the subject curriculum. The paper discusses the project from three perspectives: the university tutors’, the school teachers’ and the students’, describing professional tutoring partnership in practice.     

Design Decisions in Developing Learning Trajectories–Based Assessments in Mathematics: A Case Study

This article analyzes the design decisions of a team developing diagnostic assessments for a learning trajectory focused on rational number reasoning. The analysis focuses on the design rationale for key decisions about how to develop the cognitive assessments and related validity arguments within a fluid state and national policy context. The study draws on ethnographic methods adapted from science, technology, and society studies to document key rationales for decisions. For this team, concerns about the validity of both the assessments and the hypothetical trajectory, anticipated uses of the assessments, and the available distribution of resources and expertise to different project activities were all considerations for significant design decisions throughout the project. The study findings suggest that success in the design of trajectories-based assessments depends on teams’ attention to balancing core design activities with engagement in the external policy environment, balancing precision with utility for diagnosis in defining the levels of a trajectory, and balancing the goals of supporting and assessing student learning.     

A Practice of Cooperative Learning in EFL at College Level

This essay analyzes the current situation in EFL and discusses the research into cooperative learning conducted by the author. Through the practice of cooperative leaming, some important con clusions have been reached which verify the advantages of this method for EFL teaching and learning-especially with regard to student improvement rates.     

Teachers’ Learning Communities for Developing High Order Thinking Skills—A Case Study of a School Pedagogical Change

Interchange - This study deals with an elementary school that is undergoing a process of pedagogical change. The teachers understood that their weak point was excessive use of teaching based on...     

Partners in Learning: A Grounded Theory Study of Relational Practice between Master’s Students and Professors

Meaningful academic relationships between adult master’s students and their professors can both deepen students’ learning and serve as a regenerating force for professors. This study employed grounded theory methods to explore the question, “What goes on in relational practice between master’s students and professors?” I interviewed 10 matched pairs of recent alumni and professors who identified as having “a meaningful academic relationship”. Dimensional analysis surfaced two core dimensions: reconstructing and regenerating. In reconstructing, the students’ core dimension reveals the student experience of reconstructing, or understanding more deeply, theory or one’s self. In the case of regenerating, the professor’s core dimension identifies the professors’ experience of “giving back” through their teaching and extending their professional reach by training others. These experiences serve to reinvigorate professors over the course of their careers. In addition, findings in this study resonate with sensitizing concepts including relational cultural theory and relational practice. Finally, the analysis surfaced evidence supporting authentic teaching concepts and connected these concepts to faculty and student learning partnerships.     

Meaning Making and “The Learning Paradigm”: A Provocative Idea in Practice

Amidst the considerable literature published on institutional change in undergraduate teaching and learning, an article co-authored by Robert Barr and John Tagg in 1995 stands out. The authors offered a vision and —perhaps most importantly—gave it a memorable name, the Learning Paradigm. From Teaching to Learning—A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education is the most frequently cited article in the history of Change. In this article, Barr blended his voice with colleagues who helped initiate Learning Paradigm programs at a public university and in a liberal arts college setting. Through multiple forms of inquiry, including discourse and metaphor analysis, they interpreted the shift from teaching to learning and speculate about its future.     

How Many Ways Can We Define Online Learning? A Systematic Literature Review of Definitions of Online Learning (1988-2018)

ABSTRACT

Online learning as a concept and as a keyword has consistently been a focus of education research for over two decades. In this paper, we present results from a systematic literature review for the definitions of online learning because the concept of online learning, though often defined, has a range of meanings attached to it. Authors and scholars use the term to mean very distinct, if not contradictory concepts. We conducted systematic literature for over the last 30 years (1988 to 2018) to investigate the number and content of definitions of online learning. We collected 46 definitions from 37 resources and conducted a content analysis on these sets of definitions. Content analysis of the collected definitions led to an understanding of the core elements for defining online learning, the confusion surrounding the terms and the synonyms used for online learning. An evolution of the definition of the concept of online learning was also mapped to the evolution of technology in the last three decades.     

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.     

Professional Communities in the Context of Teachers’ Professional lives: A Case of Mathematics Specialists

We describe an urban school initiative aimed at teachers’ professional development with the goal of increasing their mathematics content knowledge and helping them improve their practice. In the lowest performing schools, mathematics specialists were employed to teach only mathematics in upper-elementary grades (ages 9–12). One aspect of this initiative was a provision of time and space for the formation of site-based professional communities that were intended to support teachers in trying to implement changes in their practice. Teachers’ professional communities developed at some sites and not at others. In this analysis, we explore the conditions that afforded or constrained the development of teachers’ professional communities. Using two contrasting school sites as examples, we describe five aspects of the teachers’ individual and collective professional lives that influenced the emergence of teachers’ professional communities.     

A Case Study of Unfounded Concepts Underpinning Controversial Practices: Lost in “Space Dyslexia”

Although many are critical of the uptake of unproven practices by teachers and families in their search for treatment for children with reading difficulties, there has been little examination of the specific conditions that persuade teachers and families to adopt such practices. This article traces the emergence and evolution of a particular meme, space dyslexia, and related memes. The space dyslexia meme is shown to be an unfounded concept, but one that has proved attractive to the popular media and presumably to those seeking alternative treatments.