Don’t overlook the obvious

这个故事有许多个版本,但都说明了一个真相:小心那些转移注意力的东西;不要忽略最明显的东西。有个男人在一家工厂工作了20年,每天晚上当他离开工厂的时候,他都会推着一辆满载稻草的小推车来到大门口的警卫处。警卫总是把稻草翻个底朝天,什么也找不出来,只好放行。一直到了这个男人退休的那一天,他仍然和往常一样来到警卫处,只是这次没有推小推车。他们已经做了好多年的朋友,警卫问他说,"查理,我看见你每天晚上从这里出去,有二十年了,我知道你一直在偷东西,现在你也退休了,告诉     

There aren’t any crocodiles in the pond

Liu Hua's father contracted a pond(承包了一个池塘). The pond was very big. There were many flowers around it. There were some trees behind the flowers. It was a very beautiful place to travel. There were many different fishes in the pond. Liu Hua's father fed them every day and they could swim freely in the water. The place was very quiet. The fishes came out at times. One day, some young men from the city found the place. And they began to have swimming in the pond. Liu Hua's father adviced them. But they didn't listen to him. He had to write two words on a big sign(牌子): No Swimming. The next Sunday some other young men came and had swimming in the pond, too. He could not stop them swimming in the pond. He was very angry. People swimming in the pond were not good for the fishes to grow. He worried about his fishes. One Sunday morning Liu Hua told his father he could stop the people swimming in the pond. He told his father not to go to the pond and he could stay there by himself. When Liu Hua was playing, three young men came to the pond. "What a nice place it is!"one of them shouted. Then he saw Liu Hua and he came over to him.     

AFeministCritique on the Alternative Ending ofADoll’sHouse

A Doll's House is a famous play written by Henrik Ibsen. In the original ending of this play, Nora abandons her children and family. However, we know that Ibsen was also forced to write another ending. In this alternative ending, Nora submits to his husband and returns to her family. This must be disdained by feminists. From the perspective of feminist criticism, this thesis holds that as a woman of liberated spirit, Nora certainly will leave her family as in the original ending writes. This thesis tends to reevaluate this alternative ending and also through analyzing the characteristic of the main character Nora, it concludes that the alternative ending is an insult to its readers.     

‘If the students don’t come,or if they don’t finish,we don’t get the money.’ Principals,immigration, and the organisational logic of school choice in Sweden

ABSTRACT

School choice is associated with increased educational inequality and across-school segregation. This article documents the organisational practices and logics affecting school segregation and inequality. Through an institutional ethnographic study of principals’ responses to school choice within the context of immigration in Malmö, Sweden, I find that principals work to align their schools with generalised conceptions of a ‘good’ school – a ‘Swedish’ school without many immigrants. Principals pursue the image or reality of ‘Swedishness’ through choices about the presentation of the school, approaches to managing enrolment, selection of programmes of study, and even decisions about where schools are located. Through their administrative work, principals write presumed preferences for Swedishness into the structure of the school system. The results suggest that, when addressing the link between school choice and equality, group preferences of school choosers cannot be considered independently of the organisation of schooling accomplished by principals and other organisational actors.     

Computers Don’t Do the Thinking电脑不会思考

电脑能够执行许多类似思考的工作．却无法真正思考。真正在思考每项工作的是人．而不是电脑。     

“Don’t give up on me”: critical mentoring pedagogy for the classroom building students’ community cultural wealth

This one-year ethnographic case study focused on students of color from a West Coast High School who faced a variety of academic challenges. Collectively, they shared perspectives on school improvement, and among the recommendations was the importance of mentorship in the classroom to develop students’ aspirational, navigational, and informational capital for academic resiliency, high expectations, and success. This article highlights the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, such as students and teachers, on the qualities of mentorship practices. Using these data, a framework was developed to promote mentoring as an interrelated process in classroom instruction to ignite a new perspective on school reform. In this particular context, this study concludes that these students of color viewed mentorship as a critical component that was often missing in their high school careers. In an effort to improve students’ experiences in the classroom, this article argues that teachers must develop critical mentoring skills, beyond what is traditionally considered as mentoring services, as a pedagogical tool to assist students to overcome their academic challenges and achieve school success.     

The Teacher＇s Education of Our College Should Be Based on Improving the Quality of Talent Cultivation

高等教育步入大众化阶段以后,提高人才培养的质量必然成为高校的立足点。这不仅是国际教育发展趋势使然,也是我国新课程改革的必然要求。学校应该针对原有培养模式的不足,采取一系列切实有效的措施,实现师范教育专业人才培养模式由追求数量到提高质量的转变。     

India’s arrival on the modern mathematical scene

Modern mathematics, and modern science in general, was embraced enthusiastically in the Indian subcontinent quite early, thanks to a large extent to the tradition of learning going back to the ancient times. By the early decades of the 20th century the Indian mathematical community had made important research contributions in diverse areas of mathematics, including number theory, real and complex analysis, diffrential geometry, diffrential equations, algebra, combinatorial mathematics and applied mathematics. Interaction with world leaders in the field, reforms in the educational system, establishment of societies for actively pursuing study and discussion of mathematics, publication of mathematical journals, were some of the major progressive steps taken. Apart from the indigenous leadership, participation of a few enlightened foreigners in the process also paved the way for the advancement of the subject in the country. We recount here the story of the early developments of the mathematical scene in India, and of the various players involved.     

Notes on the Chart ‘Aids to Communication’

There is nothing new about the use of audio and visual aids to communication. Speech and gesture and demonstration are the oldest forms; drawings very early ones, developing to hieroglyphics and ultimately to alphabets and written language. What is new is the multiplicity of media. The invention of papyrus was perhaps the earliest important fillip to mass communication—the drawings on walls were of fixed location, and clay tablets not exactly easy to transport. Then the invention of movable types with paper and printing presses made possible the vast movement of ideas leading to the ‘New Learning’ and the Renaissance in the West. Visual development was slower: drawings had to be laboriously engraved on wood or metal, in order to be reproduced by letter-press printing. This lasted until after the middle of the 19th Century. Then the tempo quickened; the inventions of photography, photo-etching, lithography, kinematography followed one another in fairly rapid succession and with the enormous improvements in the speed of printing presses, mass media in the form of newspapers, illustrated magazines, books, illustrated or otherwise, poured from the presses.     

Practitioners’ perspectives on the purpose of environmental education

Since the 1980s, scholars have suggested that environmental education (EE) has a ‘definitional problem’ represented by a multiplicity of perspectives that have critically impacted its discourse, practices, and outcomes. This study sought to investigate how North American EE practitioners from backgrounds ranging from formal and non-formal institutions think about their work. We focused on folk narratives and emerging urban environmental concerns of community education rather than reliance on academic opinion alone. Using Q methodology, the study identified five distinct perspectives that appear to represent different ways of prioritizing EE outcomes. All five perspectives were concerned with promoting sustainable living and improved human well-being, but the nuances suggest that an individual who adheres strongly to one may feel someone holding a contrasting perspective is working at cross-purposes. The authors suggest that understanding these perspectives can help reduce misunderstanding within the EE field.     

Of Course Scientists Haven’t Seen Dinosaurs on the Beach: Turkish Kindergartners’ Developing Understanding of the Nature of Science Through Explicit–Reflective Instruction

Although the importance of nature of science (NOS) instruction for learners as young as kindergartners is emphasised in a great number of documents and studies, very little research has been conducted in early childhood contexts. Thus, researchers are still not able to see a comprehensive picture of young children’s understandings of NOS. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate kindergartners’ developmental ability to comprehend tenets of NOS. Using an explicit–reflective approach and activities designed to develop their understandings of NOS, we instructed eight kindergartners for 10 days over the course of a month to document changes in their thinking. To this end, they were interviewed individually using Young Children’s Views of Science before and after instruction. The results indicate that generally, the kindergartners had an inadequate understanding of NOS before instruction but had developed it by the end of instruction. Each child’s understanding of the individual aspects of NOS developed to different degrees, creative NOS improving most substantially. This study corroborates that kindergartners are not developmentally constrained to develop informed NOS understandings. On the contrary, they are able to develop an informed understanding of NOS that can be improved by the implementation of explicit–reflective instruction.     

‘If it weren’t for my mum…’: the influence of Australian Indigenous mothers on their children’s aspirations to teach

This article draws upon data from semi‐structured interviews with Australian Indigenous teachers to explore the role their mothers played in shaping their decisions to become teachers. The findings suggest that their mothers’ emotional involvement and investment in their sons’ and daughters’ education generated significant reserves of emotional capital upon which the teachers drew. Such capital, expressed by their mothers in a variety of ways, including encouragement, coercion and anger, motivated and inspired them to complete their schooling, to consider teaching as a profession and to take out teaching degrees, often in the face of enormous challenges and barriers. They understood teaching as presenting opportunities for their own upward class mobility as well as the chance for them to bring about social change for Indigenous people in general. I conclude by arguing the need to reconsider the dominant discourses in Australia around the aspirations of Indigenous mothers in regards to their children’s education and I also raise issues for further consideration and research.     

‘I don’t Study Physics Anymore’: a Cross-Institutional Australian Study on Factors Impacting the Persistence of Undergraduate Science Students

Research in Science Education - University is a critical timepoint for students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career pathway. Gender differences in the persistence...     

The effects of browse time on the Internet on students’ essay scores

This study examined how 30 minutes of search time on the Web affected students’ essay scores in response to a writing prompt. Expository essays were obtained from 49 fourth- and fifthgrade students enrolled in an elementary school in Virginia, in the United States. Students were placed by random assignment into three groups with the same writing prompt for all three groups. Data analyses using ANOVA indicate that there was statistical significance in two components of writing. The group that received instruction on using the Internet to conduct research in the prewriting phase outperformed the control group in two areas: the total essay score (p=.053) and usage/mechanics (p=.028). The study also produced effect sizes ranging from small to large when the Internet users were compared to the control group. Implications for the future of Internet use in the school system are discussed.     

John Wilson’s confused ‘Perspectives on the Philosophy of Education’

In his ‘Perspectives on the Philosophy of Education’ John Wilson laments the confusion that surrounds the current state of the philosophy of education. Unlike other branches of philosophy, he claims, it is not clear what the philosophy of education is about, and a snapshot of current work in the field reveals its lack of coherence. To remedy this he advocates starting ‘from scratch’: the philosophy of education is to be understood as a discipline concerned with the logic of value judgements and focused on questions of learning. While the present paper acknowledges the extent of Wilson’s contribution to the field, it draws attention to the confusion in the position that he holds, and shows that his assessment of the current state of the philosophy of education is both inaccurate and politically blinkered. In the process, the paper challenges his account of the philosophy of education as a branch of philosophy and offers a more coherent characterisation.     

It doesn’t matter,but: examining the impact of ambient learning displays on energy consumption and conservation at the workplace

This study reports an intervention to initiate environmental learning and facilitate pro-environmental behaviour. The purpose was to examine the impact of ambient learning displays on energy consumption and conservation at the workplace, more specifically the evaluation of learning outcome and behaviour change. Using a quasi-experimental design, the empirical study was conducted among employees working at a university campus. For the experimental treatments, ambient learning display prototypes were varied on two design dimensions, namely representational fidelity and notification level. The results do not provide clear evidence that the design of the displays influences learning outcome or that the displays lead to pro-environmental behaviour change. Nevertheless, the sole deployment of the display prototypes eased the comprehension of the information provided and lowered the need for additional information. Thus, ambient learning displays provide a promising framework in the context of environmental learning and beyond.