Mapping literacy practices: theory,methodology, methods

This study identifies ideas about science to which elementary school students are exposed and the manner in which teachers convey those ideas. This is accomplished by developing a scheme ‐based on the work of Hanson – for observing and analyzing classroom interactions, both dialogue and activities, as they occur during science lessons. A set of observation clues, which comprise a nine‐category analytical scheme, disclose three views about science – sensationalist, formalist, and rational – that are presented through the activities of observation, experiment, and explanation.     

Neo-conservatives,Neo-liberals,the New Left and Inclusion: Stirring the pot

Layers of policy often conflict with one another. In this paper, different layers of policy - and more importantly the different intellectual stables from which they emerge are explored in relation to inclusion. There are those of the New Right, with its emphasis on individualism, the free market, tradition and the family; and there are those of the new centre-left, which stresses the importance of community and 'stakeholder welfare'. We argue that there are attempts in much recent policy to fuse both kinds of thinking and that expressions about the need for a plural, tolerant, inclusive education system sometimes sit uneasily with policy which foregrounds the benefits of choice, selection and the comparison of schools on the basis of their pupils' attainment. While proclamations from politicians about benefits of inclusion are to be welcomed, the effects of exhortation will be counteracted by policy whose effects are to promote competition.     

Misrepresentations of Indigenous History and Science: Public broadcasting,the Internet,and education

This paper examines the role of history in power relations which suppress Indigenous knowledges. History is located as being about power and about how the powerful maintain their power. The paper further examines the Bering Strait theory/myth and ways that discourses in history combine with discourses in science to devalue Indigenous knowledges. The “truth” of science is challenged and examples of manipulation of scientific knowledge are provided, including discussions of a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation made for television production A people's history and an Internet website provided by the American government. These production activities supported by the Canadian and American governments are considered educational activities engaged in the practice of cultural representation in which dominant discourses about Indigenous peoples are presented. The paper challenges dominant misrepresentations of discourses about Indigenous peoples in a discussion of educational practices emphasizing the need of Indigenous peoples to control education and cultural representations. The paper concludes that it is a responsibility of society to educate all students to understand that any portrayal of history comes from a particular vantage point and to understand that dominant society privileges some representations and disadvantages others. If we teach in a critical way and challenge dominant discourses we can begin to create a society in which all persons in Canada and the USA, including Indigenous peoples, have a role to play.     

Globalisation,Effectiveness and Improvement

It is argued that globalisation is imposing pressures upon the nature of education, internationally. A case is made that school effectiveness research has contributed to these global pressures but should be concerned to establish more knowledge about the complex interactions between culture and schooling. A series of questions are asked about the extent to which schools of the future should be different from historic models, and about the potentially important role of educational researchers in furthering education advance and building a more just society.     

A case of preservice elementary teachers exploring, retelling, and reframing

This study shows preservice elementary teachers' frames (points of view) about science curriculum. Frames are rules that influence how one perceives and organises events with which one thinks. Participants' frames were externalised by exploring issues from Sagan's text,The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996), Sagan uses commonly held frames about controversial topics to contrast pseudoscience and science. This narrative explores how students retelling their reactions (to experiences of their own design) might influence one's awareness of beliefs in general and reconsideration of personal beliefs about science and teaching. The entangled issues of critical and metaphoric thinking, as well as reframing are exemplified.     

Exploring the relations between epistemic beliefs,emotions, and learning from texts

Conflicting claims about important socio-scientific debates are proliferating in contemporary society. It is therefore important to understand the individual characteristics that predict learning from conflicting claims. We explored individuals’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing (i.e., epistemic beliefs) and their emotions as potentially interrelated sets of learner characteristics that predict learning in such contexts. Undergraduate university students (N = 282) self-reported their topic-specific epistemic beliefs and were given three conflicting texts about climate change to read. Immediately after each of the three texts, participants self-reported the emotions they experienced. Following reading and self-report, participants wrote summaries of the conflicting texts. Text-mining and human coding were applied to summaries to construct two indices of learning from conflicting texts that reflected which source’s information is privileged in memory. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that epistemic beliefs were consistent in their predictions of emotions, which in turn variously predicted different learning outcomes. In particular, a belief that knowledge is justified by inquiry predicted surprise and curiosity, which at times facilitated learning. In contrast, confusion, predicted by passive reliance on external sources, related to impaired memory of conflicting content. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed for research on the relations between epistemic beliefs, emotions, and learning about controversial topics.     

Advancing educational diversity: antifragility,standardization, democracy,and a multitude of education options

This essay is a response to a paper by Avery and Hains that raises questions about the often unintended effects of knowledge standardization in an educational setting. While many K-12 schools are implementing common core standards, and many institutions of higher education are implementing their own standardized educational practices, the question is raised about what is lost in this effort to ensure regularity and consistency in educational outcomes. One such casualty may be local knowledge, which in a rural context includes ancestral knowledge about land, society, and cultural meaning. This essay explores whether or not efforts to standardize crowd out such knowledge, and decrease the diversity of knowledge within our society’s complex ecosystem—thus making the ecosystem weaker. Using antifragility as a useful idea for examining system complexity, the essay considers the impact of standardization on innovation, democracy, and the valuation of some forms of knowledge (and its bearers) above others.     

Friends,foes, and self-defence: students with EBD navigating social conflicts and bullying

Students with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) are more likely to struggle than their peers, which can lead to disengagement and early dropout. Although there are alternate programmes for these students, they are rarely consulted about their struggles, or about their perceived needs. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of students with EBD from their entry in mainstream classrooms to their placement in an alternate programme. During a semi-structured interview and visual mapping activity, six participants described their schooling experiences and their depictions were analysed using an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Participants described the social process of school and emphasised the importance of relationships with peers and teachers, and the challenges they experienced in these relationships, which included relational, psychological, and physical aggression. Findings highlight the need to consider the reciprocal nature of bullying for students with EBD, and its influence on their schooling.     

Modeling as moral education: Documenting,analyzing, and addressing a central belief of preservice teachers

This study reports belief survey data from 92 preservice teachers responding to questions about the moral work of teaching. Those data reveal that participants commonly express the belief that modeling is a primary means by which moral education occurs. The survey responses are analyzed to show a number of themes regarding the nature of preservice teachers' beliefs about how modeling works. Recommendations for teacher education practice to prepare preservice teachers for the moral work of teaching, by addressing their beliefs about such work, are discussed, along with ongoing research needs to support effective and responsible teacher education practices.     

古代官员升迁、降黜制度在语言中的投影

我国古代职官制度是我们祖先留下的一份宝贵的文化财富。其中官员的升迁、降黜就形成了一套完整、严密的制度，职官的变动都有一些专门用语深深地刻印在语言中，我们对这些用语进行一番较系统的训释，可以从一个侧面窥视到我国古代灿烂的政治文化。     

Prospective Primary Teachers' Understanding of Climate Change, Greenhouse Effect, and Ozone Layer Depletion

Climate change is one of the most serious global environmental problems and for that reason there has been lately a great interest in educating pupils, the future citizens, about it. Previous research has shown that pupils of all ages and teachers hold many misconceptions and misunderstandings concerning this issue. This paper reports on research concerning student teachers' perceptions about aspects of climate change as well as about greenhouse effect and ozone layer depletion. The aim of this research is to take findings into account for teaching student teachers about these issues. An open-ended questionnaire was used in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their thought. From their answers it appeared that these students believe that climate change is under way and base their beliefs on their own experience. They are unaware of the proper actions to be taken for slowing down the climate change, they also hold the misconception that ozone depletion, acid rain, and pollution in general are conducive to climate change. They confuse greenhouse effect with ozone depletion as far as the mechanisms through which they occur is concerned and the causal compounds. By taking into account these research findings the possible implications for teaching are discussed and some suggestions for more effective teaching are made.     

Technology,teachers, and the search for school reform

Educational technologists have increasingly moved away from direct involvement in the world of the classroom teacher in recent years. The assumptions that technologists and teachers make about educational technology and about teaching now diverge markedly. At the same time, new reform proposals have suggested ways to restructure schools that would enhance the role of teachers as instructional decision-makers and offer them more control over their professional work life. Elements of the reform agenda are characterized, and ways are described in which educational technologists might work together with teachers in pursuit of reform goals. These include: (1) preparation of models for teaching-with-technology; (2) design of intelligent software; (3) creation of technologically based tools to support teachers' professional work and development; and (4) improvement of research about technology in education. Note:An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, Dallas, Texas, February 4, 1989.     

When victims don't cry: children's understandings of victimization, compliance, and subversion

How do children understand situations in which the targets of moral transgressions do not complain about the way they are treated? One-hundred and twenty participants aged 5, 7, 10, 13, and 16 years were interviewed about hypothetical situations in which one child ("transgressor") made an apparently unfair demand of another child ("victim"), who then responded by either resisting, complying, or subverting. In general, 5-year-olds judged compliance positively and resistance negatively and 7- to 16-year-olds judged resistance positively and compliance negatively; all but 16-year-olds judged subversion negatively. Most participants judged the transgressor's actions negatively, regardless of how the victim had responded. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for children's developing understandings of victimization.     

Challenging assumptions about values,interests and power in further and higher education partnerships

This article raises questions that challenge assumptions about values, interests and power in further and higher education partnerships. These topics were explored in a series of semi-structured interviews with a sample of principals and senior higher education partnership managers of colleges spread across a single region in England. The data suggest that common assumptions evident in the literature and professional discourse about the hegemony of higher education institutions in partnerships with further education and sixth form colleges may be misplaced. Questions are also raised about an exclusive focus upon shared values in educational partnerships, and it is suggested that greater clarity about the focus of educational partnerships can explain how successful partnerships can negotiate which values and interests are shared and which are not – an approach that can be a useful modus operandi in the increasingly competitive educational markets in which universities and colleges operate.     

Nostalgia,the Future,and the Past as Pedagogical Technologies

This article provides a genealogical perspective on narratives about the past and the future as governmental discourses in teacher education, public health, and criminal justice in Sweden. Contemporary governmental strategies bring nostalgic memories of the past and visions and fears about the future back to life in the present. The past (history) is a technology of the present to re-memorialize who “we” are and have been. The future is a spatial concept, a technology to shape and nurture the “future oriented” subject bent on the pursuit of lifelong learning. The notions of history and future in the construction of the lifelong learner function to link and harmonize the interest of the individual with that of society. As technologies of government these are not new. Similar technologies were operating in the discourses about the future, society, and the citizen in the first part of the 20th century. What is new is the particular capabilities and capacities of the individual as an agent of the future and the collective principles in which life is lived.     

Tools for Knowledge Analysis, Synthesis, and Sharing

Change and complexity are creating a need for increasing levels of literacy in science and technology. Presently, we are beginning to provide students with clear contexts in which to learn, including clearly written text, visual displays and maps, and more effective instruction. We are also beginning to give students tools that promote their own literacy by helping them to interact with the learning context. These tools include peer-group skills as well as strategies to analyze text and to indicate comprehension by way of text summaries and concept maps. Even with these tools, more appears to be needed. Disparate backgrounds and languages interfere with the comprehension and the sharing of knowledge. To meet this need, two new tools are proposed. The first tool fractures language ontologically, giving all learners who use it a language to talk about what has, and what has not, been uttered in text or talk about the world. The second fractures language epistemologically, giving those involved in working with text or on the world around them a way to talk about what they have done and what remains to be done. Together, these tools operate as a two- tiered knowledge representation of knowledge. This representation promotes both an individual meta-cognitive and a social meta-cognitive approach to what is known and to what is not known, both ontologically and epistemologically. Two hypotheses guide the presentation: If the tools are taught during early childhood, children will be prepared to master science and technology content. If the tools are used by both students and those who design and deliver instruction, the learning of such content will be accelerated.     

Young people, citizenship and citizenship education in Zimbabwe

Citizenship education in Zimbabwe is based on the claim that young people lack citizenship virtues. This study set out to investigate these assumptions by assessing high school students’ knowledge of, attitudes towards and participation levels in citizenship issues. Findings show that while students are knowledgeable about citizenship issues they are however, hesitant about involvement in political activities. The study concludes that the reported claims are partly not valid. In a politically sensitive environment students are unwilling to engage in political activities. They accurately assess the situation and adopt a position which other citizens in similar circumstances might take.     

Innovation,education, and media

Conclusion The reluctance to change on the part of educators and school systems represents a paradoxical situation. Teaching and learning consists of trying to bring about behavior changes, and the purpose of education is to develop individuals who are adaptive and creative. Therefore, the effort of the teacher and the major purpose of the educational enterprise is to bring about planned change in the individual. Why persons who are committed to this objective for all of the pupils for whom they have responsibility should reject or be neutral to planned change in their own practices as teachers is a gnawing and perplexing question. The preparation of this paper was supported by a contract with the Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, under the provisions of Title VH-B of the National Defense Education Act. The publicationMedia and Educational Innovation, upon which this paper is based, is available for $2 from the University of Nebraska Extension Division, Nebraska Hall #511, Lincoln.     

共同的存在,异样的书写——阎连科、萨特、加缪小说比较研究

以萨特为代表的无神论存在主义者认为人的存在先于本质,他们假设上帝已死,人的一切言行缺乏一个可以附着的权威标准。人存在着,其本身无善恶的本质可言。人在行动之前完全有选择的自由,任何一种客观存在的条件都不能成为其作出选择的借口,而且人必须为自己作出的选择承担责任。