Beyond space and across time: non-finalized dialogue about science and religion discourse

This commentary dialogues with three articles that analyze the same database about science and religion discourse produced 17 years ago. Dialogues in these three articles and this commentary across space and time allow us to develop new and different understandings of the same database and situation. As part of this commentary, I discuss topics approached in the three articles including the collective nature of discourses, emotion, and constructivist view on learning. I draw on three essential concepts of the dialogical nature of utterance, the emotional-volitional tone and internally persuasive discourse informed by Bakhtin’s dialogism. In particular, I conclude that Bakhtin’s dialogism not only invites us to understand science learning discourse in a more holistic way but also encourages us to open up dialogues between science and religion that often are considered to be two hostile opponents.     

The Missing Element to Achieving a Citizenship-as-Practice: Balancing Freedom and Responsibility in Schools Today

The new Social Studies curriculum recently introduced in Alberta proposes to encourage students to affirm their place as citizens in a democratic society. Grounded in Biesta’s (2007) argument that regardless of a Program of Studies’ best stated goals and intentions, if a school is not structured democratically the chances of the program being successful are limited. In this article, I question what makes a school democratic as opposed to undemocratic by proposing that the new curriculum is grounded in a representational view of knowledge which leads to a document that is overly conceptualized and presents a view of citizenship as one that can be achieved rather than one that is practiced (Biesta & Lawy, 2006). I argue that it is the representational curriculum and the public school’s organizational structure with its emphasis on duties and responsibilities and the virtual absence of freedom and rights that make these schools fundamentally undemocratic places. In order to pursue this line of inquiry, I juxtapose schools in the public system with a private school which claims to be a participative democracy. This juxtaposition revealed that a school that gives students freedom first and trusts that they will act responsibly with it, is more likely to lead to a citizenship that is practiced rather than one that is simply achieved. While it is not the intention of this paper, to recommend that all schools adopt the model of the private school in this study, it does help us understand why Biesta (2007) is not overly optimistic regarding schools being able to achieve a citizenship that is practiced as opposed to one that is achieved.     

Return of the Hacker as Hero: Fictions and Realities of Teenage Technological Experts

When critics consider young people’s practices within cyberspace, the focus is often on negative aspects, namely cyber-bullying, obsessive behaviour, and the lack of a balanced life. Such analyses, however, may miss the agency and empowerment young people experience not only to make decisions but to have some degree of control over their lives through their engagement with and use of technology, which often includes sharing it with others in cyberspace. This was a finding of research conducted by Nicola Johnson, which also informs the two novels considered in this article, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and Brian Falkner’s Brainjack. The article draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of acts of resistance (Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of our Time, 1998) to demonstrate how these fictional representations of hacker heroes make a direct address to their readers to use their technological expertise to achieve social justice. Rather than hacking primarily to “see if they can do it,” the protagonists of these novels acknowledge the moral ambiguity of hacking and encourage its responsible use.     

Racial Identification and Audience in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and the Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963

Multiethnic children’s literature addresses multiple audiences, providing different reading experiences and benefits for each. Using critical race theory as an interpretive tool, this article examines how two African American historical fiction novels, Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Christopher Paul Curtis’s The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, frame anti-racist identifications for readers of all races. It argues that these identifications are key elements in the novels’ rhetorical strategies for engaging readers and opposing racism. Both novels portray strong African American families with whom both black and nonblack readers can identify and present African American perspectives on race, but they differ in how directly they approach racism and how they frame the identification of white readers. The conclusion offers implications of analyzing race and audience when teaching multiethnic literature.     

A new context for understanding civic responsibility: Relating Culture to Action at a Research University

Civic responsibility as an ideal of higher education is rarely considered through a cultural and theoretical lens. Swidler’s (1986, American Sociological Review, 51: 273–286) framework linking ideology, culture and action was used in this ethnographic study of a research university (a) to understand dominant institutional beliefs about civic responsibility and (b) to understand how institutional culture contributes to a unique approach to civic responsibility. This study examined campus ideologies and cultural forms that addressed five dimensions of civic responsibility: (a) knowledge and support of democratic values, systems and processes, (b) desire to act beneficially in community and for its members, (c) use of knowledge and skills for societal benefit, (d) appreciation for and interest in those unlike oneself, and (e) personal accountability. The “role model” approach emerged as a unique institutional approach to civic responsibility and aligned with Swidler’s framework. Findings are significant for both organization studies and student development research.     

The Race for Class: Reflections on a Critical Raceclass Theory of Education

This article is intended to appraise the insights gained from Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Education. It is particularly interested in CRT's relationship with Marxist discourse, which falls under two questions. One, how does CRT understand Marxist concepts, such as capital, which show up in the way CRT appropriates them? The article argues that Marxist concepts, such as historical classes, class-for-itself, are useful for race analysis as it sets parameters around the conceptual use of historical races and a race-for-itself. Two, how does CRT understand the role of capitalism, therefore shedding light on its position regarding the class problem? It is no doubt attentive to class power, but this is not the same as performing an immanent critique of capitalism. As a result, within CRT class achieves a color whereby class becomes a variant of race, better known as classism. Race becomes the theory with class vocabulary superimposed on it. Last, I suggest areas where CRT could combine with Marxism in order to forge a Critical Raceclass Theory of Education.     

National gender equity and schooling policy in Australia: Struggles for a non-identitarian feminist politics

This paper tracks the development of gender equity and schooling policy in Australia from theNational Policy on the Education of Girls in 1987, to current policy concerns with boys’ educational underperformance. The paper’s key focus is on the ways in which feminist informed equity policy has been undermined by broader imperatives of economic rationalism and anti-feminist discourses. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s understandings of distributive and cultural gender justice and her notion of a nonidentitarian feminist politics, the paper critically examines the ways in which such imperatives have re-articulated equity and schooling concerns. Through these lenses, the limitations of the affirmative gender binary politics and remedies that have dominated gender and schooling reform in Australia are highlighted. The paper concludes with an illumination of the gender justice spaces currently being mobilised in Australian schools. Such spaces, it is argued, fostered within a context of increasing autonomy and self-management for schools, are providing avenues for creative and disruptive (pro)feminist activism.     

Bridging the Gap Between Preservice Early Childhood Teachers’ Cultural Values, Perceptions of Values Held by Scientists, and the Relationships of These Values to Conceptions of Nature of Science

This study explored preservice teachers’ views of their own cultural values, the cultural values they believed scientists hold, and the relationships of these views to their conceptions of nature of science (NOS). Parallel assignments in a foundations of early childhood education and a science methods course required preservice teachers to explore their own cultural backgrounds and their perceptions of the cultural backgrounds of scientists. The Schwartz Values Inventory was used to measure preservice teachers’ personal cultural values and those they perceived of scientists. The Views of Nature of Science version B questionnaire and interviews assessed teachers’ conceptions of NOS. Copies of student work were collected and sought for themes indicating how preservice teachers perceived scientists’ cultural values and how those perceptions changed over time. We found that from the beginning to the end of the semester, preservice teachers perceived fewer differences between their own cultural values and those they perceived scientists held, though they did not change their own cultural values. We found that preservice teachers’ NOS conceptions improved, and that they were related to both their cultural values and those they perceived scientists held. Preservice teachers who indicated the fewest differences between their own cultural values and those they perceived scientists held the most informed conceptions of NOS.     

The Role of Drawing in Young Children’s Construction of Science Concepts

It has been observed that many young children like making marks on paper and that they enjoy the activity. It is also known that children’s drawings are vehicles for expression and communication. Therefore, it would be logical and reasonable for teachers to incorporate children’s drawings into building science concepts. To demonstrate how drawings are utilized to help a child to acquire a science concept, the article first presents a vignette of an interaction between an adult and a 5-year-old boy, focusing on the science concept of the physical characteristics of a spider. It is then followed by several analytical explanations of how drawings build children’s understandings. Not only are the introduced strategies useful for one-on-one interactive communication, but also applicable to a small group of young children. The article ends with the specifics of how these strategies were applied to a group of four children in their acquisition of the science concept of the water cycle.     

Effects of the Zippy’s Friends Programme on Children’s Coping Abilities During the Transition from Kindergarten to Elementary School

This article explores the effects of participation during kindergarten in Zippy’s Friends, a 24-week school-based programme to help young people better cope with everyday adversities, on their adaptation to first grade. The experimental group consisted of 140 children in the first year of primary school who had participated in the Zippy’s Friends programme the preceding year when they attended a kindergarten in a different school. Results show that, compared to a control group of 106 children, participation in Zippy’s Friends is related to better adaptation to the transition from kindergarten to first grade. The experimental group was higher in behavioral and emotional adaptation to school, had more positive reactions to the new school environment and used more appropriate and more diversified coping strategies, when compared with the control group. The discussion explores why Zippy’s Friends may be related to better adaptation to transition from kindergarten to first grade.     

Neuroscience, Play and Early Childhood Education: Connections, Implications and Assessment

Paralleling the works of Cambourne’s Conditions of Literacy Learning (The Reading Teacher, 54(4), 414–429, 2001), Copple and Bredekamp’s (Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving children from birth though age. National Association for the Education of Young Children, Washington, 2009) Developmentally Appropriate Practices and the findings from the field of Neuroscience this article explores the important components of creating an active, stimulating learning environment; one purposely designed to actively engage the minds of young children in order to help strengthen their neurological networks. The article concludes its exploration with the role of “mirror neurons” in the learning environment and how they affect the young child's mood, emotions, and empathy.     

Constructing knowledge: An effective use of educational technology for teaching Islamic studies in the UK

The 21st century as a digital age is characterized by the increased accessibility of information and knowledge through the medium of sophisticated technological tools. The main aim of this article is to show how educational technology can be used effectively to help students construct knowledge when teaching Islamic studies in the UK. The first part of this paper summarizes the differences between information sharing and knowledge construction with reference to the essence of knowledge as Aristotelian ‘episteme’ (theoretical knowledge) and technê (practical knowledge: know-how); and the extent which the former process is created by the use of Information Technology (IT) while the latter is enhanced by Educational Technology (ET). The second part explores how ET can be used effectively to ‘provide training in critical and creative thinking skills of students’ as an integral part of producing useful tools and generating practical benefit during their learning process (Felder et al. 2000, p. 26; Callaos 2009, p. 3). The third, then, explains why a student centred and research-based teaching is preferred to traditional research-led method in order to support the construction of knowledge. The paper concludes by presenting some reflections and limitations on how effective use of ET and research-based teaching can help students to become critical thinkers while studying Islam and Middle Eastern politics as part of international politics curriculum in the UK.     

The Alleged Importance of Being Tough, Really Tough

Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, a philosopher and a psychiatrist, now both policy analysts at the American Enterprise Institute, write in their recent book One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance that empirically unsupported psychological theories ultimately descended from the cultural upheavals of the 1960s have slowly wormed their way into the educational and social scientific mainstream. These theories, the authors argue, promote a view of the human person as someone who is ‘too fragile for this world’, and in need of ceaseless counseling and coddling from the cradle to the grave. The case the authors make for their thesis is, I argue, uneven – strong in specific cases, but weak and overwrought in many others. In the end, I argue, they misidentify the main cause of the increasing shallowness that, to a growing number of critics, is slowly infesting contemporary social science and education. A review essay on Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel’s, One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance, 2005, St. Martin’s Press, New York.     

Navigating Worlds of “Trouble and Woe and Worse” in Children’s Literature: An Exploration into the Double Text of Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak’s Brundibar

In this article, the author explores the richly layered double text of Kushner and Sendak’s picturebook, Brundibar (2003)—the historical context of Brundibár as a Holocaust-era children’s operetta by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister, and the present day manifestation of Brundibar as a children’s picturebook. In order to contextualize the discussion of Kushner and Sendak’s text, Brundibar’s historical origins in Nazi-annexed Czechoslovakia and its transition to the stage in the Nazi “model” concentration camp, Terezín, is presented. An extensive semiotic analysis of Kushner and Sendak’s illustrations and text is also provided within the framework of what Kushner (The art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the present, 2003) terms “a world of trouble and woe and worse” (p. 210). Furthermore, the author discusses the development of Sendak’s Hitlerian Brundibar and the struggles that both Kushner and Sendak faced as they considered how to portray the story’s antagonist, given their somewhat differing conceptions of which difficult themes and topics children should be exposed to during childhood. To round out this discussion, the author explores pedagogical implications for teachers as they read difficult texts, particularly Holocaust texts, with children.     

National Identity in a Multicultural Society: Malaysian Children’s Literature in English

This article explores the question of how children’s literature reflects national identity in a diverse society. Drawing parallels with Ellison’s Invisible Man, it speculates on how literary omissions and misrepresentations of diverse groups may influence the minds of young readers in their attitudes toward themselves, their nation, and others. In a sampling of the current children’s picture book literature of Malaysia in English, it relates current thinking in multiculturalist and post-colonial theory to the forms of multiculturalism found in these works. It examines this literature’s representations of history, diversity, class, gender, and values to determine who is represented, how they are portrayed, who is excluded, and what values are promoted, exploring what image of national identity this literature projects.

“A Nightmare Land, A Place of Death”: An Exploration of the Moon as a Motif in Hergé’s Destination Moon (1953) and Explorers on the Moon (1954)

This article analyses the symbolic meaning of the Moon in two bande dessinée books from the Tintin series, Hergé’s Destination Moon (Objectif Lune, 1953) and its sequel Explorers on the Moon (On a Marché sur la Lune, 1954). It argues that these two volumes stand out in the series for their graphic, narrative and philosophical emphasis on both intellectual achievement and physical death. The Moon, as a goal of modern science and a traditional artistic symbol, is made to celebrate the human mind. But Hergé also makes it a dangerous no man’s land, where human beings are made to understand the limitations of their physical abilities. The Moon emphasises the distortion between human dreams of grandeur and the concrete impossibility of their realisation, and the threats they pose to corporeality. As a result, the article suggests that the Moon trip can be seen as a modern re-enactment of the mythological journey to Hell, as the works of the human mind are constantly thwarted by the risk of physical death.     

Rethinking historical and cultural source of spontaneous mental models of water cycle: in the perspective of South Korea

This review explores Ben-Zvi Assaraf, Eshach, Orion, and Alamour’s paper titled “Cultural Differences and Students’ Spontaneous Models of the Water Cycle: A Case Study of Jewish and Bedouin Children in Israel” by examining how the authors use the concept of spontaneous mental models to explain cultural knowledge source of Bedouin children’s mental model of water compared to Jewish children’s mental model of water in nature. My response to Ben-Zvi Assaraf et al.’s work expands upon their explanations of the Bedouin children’s cultural knowledge source. Bedouin children’s mental model is based on their culture, religion, place of living and everyday life practices related to water. I suggest a different knowledge source for spontaneous mental model of water in nature based on unique history and traditions of South Korea where people think of water in nature in different ways. This forum also addresses how western science dominates South Korean science curriculum and ways of assessing students’ conceptual understanding of scientific concepts. Additionally I argue that western science curriculum models could diminish Korean students’ understanding of natural world which are based on Korean cultural ways of thinking about the natural world. Finally, I also suggest two different ways of considering this unique knowledge source for a more culturally relevant teaching Earth system education.     

The re-theorisation of collective pedagogy and emergent curriculum

This essay review of Goulart and Roth’s work explores the cultural-historical concepts that they have drawn upon to create a new conception of emergent curriculum in early childhood science education. The pedagogical contexts of Brazilian preschools is discussed in relation to other practices found across cultural communities, with a view to locating the specific research need that has arisen for preschools within Brazil. In the latter part of this article, Davydov’s (International perspectives in non-classical psychology, 2008) work on theoretical knowledge and dialectical thinking is discussed in order to further develop Goulart and Roth’s conception of early childhood science curriculum.     

Children Explain the Rainbow: Using Young Children’s Ideas to Guide Science Curricula

This study examines young children’s ideas about natural science phenomena and explores possibilities in starting investigations in kindergarten from their ideas. Given the possibilities inherent in how young children make sense of their experiences, we believe it is critical to take children’s perspectives into consideration when designing any activities, and ideally, to design activities from their perspectives and understandings. Specifically, this research focuses on 5- and 6-year old children’s explanations of rainbows, and there are three main findings. First, our analysis demonstrates that opportunities to discuss their ideas revealed children’s different perceptions of the phenomena of rainbows. Secondly, this research emphasizes that peer-to-peer interaction in the co-construction of science concepts provided support to the children to learn from, and with, each other. Third, children’s initial explanations provided the teacher-researcher (second author) with a starting point to scaffold her teaching from. Although rainbows are quite an abstract topic to try to reproduce in the classroom, the children demonstrated their often sophisticated understandings of natural science phenomena, as well as their creative ideas as related to rainbows. In order to foster an appreciation of themes in natural science, it is crucial to build from what children already know and can do, and to use these emergent theories and considerations in designing curriculum. Thus, we draw implications for the importance of teaching science at the early childhood level and for using children’s ideas as starting points in planning instruction.     

The Challenges of Science Inquiry Teaching for Pre-Service Teachers in Elementary Classrooms: Difficulties on and under the Scene

In the context of the emphasis on inquiry teaching in science education, this study looks into how pre-service elementary teachers understand and practise science inquiry teaching during field experience. By examining inquiry lesson preparation, practice, and reflections of pre-service elementary teachers, we attempt to understand the difficulties they encounter and what could result from those difficulties in their practice. A total of 16 seniors (fourth-year students) in an elementary teacher education program participated in this study. In our findings, we highlight three difficulties ‘on the lesson’ that are related to teaching practices that were missing in the classrooms: (1) developing children’s own ideas and curiosity, (2) guiding children in designing valid experiments for their hypotheses, (3) scaffolding children’s data interpretation and discussion and another three difficulties ‘under the lesson’ that are related to problems with the pre-service teachers’ conceptualization of the task: (4) tension between guided and open inquiry, (5) incomplete understanding of hypothesis, and (6) lack of confidence in science content knowledge. Based on these findings, we discuss how these difficulties are complexly related in the pre-service teachers’ understandings and action. Several suggestions for science teacher education for inquiry teaching, especially hypothesis-based inquiry teaching, are then explored.