Philosophically correct science stories? Examining the implications of heroic science stories for school science

Some people think that science is a set of facts that can be presented in plain and unadorned language. This fosters a belief that science has few stories. Actually, stories are very important in school science. In an examination of science textbooks, I have identified four different types of science stories which I call (a) heroic, (b) discovery, (c) declarative, and (d) politically correct. Each of these types of story promotes a particular set of philosophical assumptions about science. These assumptions are presented implicitly within the framework of the story as truths of science. This article specifically examines the philosophical assumptions that underpin heroic science stories and the implications of these stories in the discursive practices of the school science classroom. As teachers, we need to be critically aware of these assumptions, since they may be at odds with our beliefs about knowledge and our preferred teaching practices. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 175–187, 1998.     

The Stories They’d Tell: Pre-Service Elementary Teachers Writing Stories to Demonstrate Physical Science Concepts

Preservice teachers enrolled in a science content-based course wrote stories that could help their future students understand a science concept. First, participants chose their topic and wrote the story with few guidelines to establish a baseline. In the next part, a different set of students were given a choice of three topics (based on force, electricity, and heat misconceptions), and collaborated to write stories with guidance from the instructor. Stories were analyzed for narrative and science units, and test scores examined. Without guidance, many students struggled to find ways to integrate science within a story. With guidance, participants wrote stories that included more narrative elements overall, and participants felt the stories helped them understand the concepts.     

科学故事：在科学教育中的教学意义及策略

在科学教育中,科学故事具有重要而独特的功能。运用科学故事的结构和组成要素选择或构建科学故事,运用观念驱动理解法指导学生阅读科学故事,有利于充分发挥科学故事的教育教学功能。     

A Sense of Story: Interactive Journal Writing in Kindergarten

Journal writing is a way to encourage process writing which promotes a sense of story. Written interactions or dialogues between the child and the teacher can support the story as children are involved in the writing process. The article describes one way to support the development of a story through journal writing. Children begin the story on their first page of the journal. The teacher responds in writing and the child subsequently converses with the teacher to produce stories and personal narratives. The written conversation helps children produce a story with a sense of meaning. Suggestions for kindergarten teachers and teacher education students include how to create the journal, what the writing center looks like, the necessity for a long-term commitment to writing, the importance of verbal and written interactions, and directions for beginning the interactive journal writing experience.     

爱情之道止于至善--赏心乐事《牡丹亭》与悲情伤怀《罗密欧与朱丽叶》之比较

《牡丹亭》和《罗密欧与朱丽叶》作为中西方文学史上的经典爱情名著,都出现在16世纪90年代,都以不同方式阐释相似的爱情故事。文章试图对这两部作品进行比较,以揭示两个剧本在描写至真爱情方面的相似之处。通过对这两个剧本的对比分析,可以进一步了解汤显祖和莎士比亚爱情观的异同,他们的爱情观的许多方面直至今天都有其现实意义。     

从文体学角义分析《橘子和苹果》

《橘子和苹果》是加拿大女作家艾丽丝·门罗的短篇小说。她的小说多集中于描绘加拿大乡村居住者的情感生活。本文试图从文体学角度分析《橘子和苹果》,包括以下两个方面：叙述者和叙述角度;小说中的对话。     

下沉视点 反抗虚构——论“新写实小说”的创作特点

产生于20世纪末的中国“新写实小说”是当时社会背景下的一个必然。它化解了当代小说传统的写作模式，以下沉的创作视角和摒弃虚构的细节，使当代中国文学回到了生活的原生状态。一大批简洁平实却具有震撼力的作品的出现满足了读者的阅读期待，成为20世纪90年代的文学亮点。     

The Application of Historical Narrative in Science Learning: The Atlantic Cable Story

The use of historically based stories to teach science has both theoretical and practical support. This paper outlines how the historically based story may be utilized effectively in the classroom and, as an illustration of this, presents the story of Lord Kelvin’s role in the laying of the first trans-Atlantic communications cable during the period from 1857 to 1866. Expected and observed classroom benefits that accrue from this approach are summarized. The paper concludes with an outline of a program of research which incorporates the development of historically based stories.     

The Story Behind the Science: Bringing Science and Scientists to Life in Post-Secondary Science Education

With funding from the United States National Science Foundation, 30 historical short stories designed to teach science content and draw students?? attention to the nature of science (NOS) have been created for post-secondary introductory astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, and physics courses. The project rationale, story development and structure, and freely available stories at the project website are presented.     

Engaging Girls’ Sociohistorical Identities in Science

What does it mean for ethnic minority girls, who have historically been marginalized by schools, to “see themselves” in science? Schools fail to create spaces for students to engage their identity resources in the learning of science or to negotiate and enact new science-related identities. This study investigates relationships among identity, engagement, and science discourse and provides a conceptual argument for how and why underserved ethnic minority girls engage in collective identity work, with science learning as a valued byproduct. The primary context for the study was Lunchtime Science, a 4-week lunchtime intervention for girls failing their science courses. There were 4 distinct ways the girls engaged in learning during Lunchtime Science: gleaning content for outside worlds, supporting the group, negotiating stories across worlds, and critiquing science. Each pattern had a signature profile with variations in the sociohistorical narratives used as resources, the positioning of one another as competent learners, and the type of science story critiqued and constructed. These findings indicate that when the girls were given opportunities to engage their personal narratives, and when science was open to critique, ethnic minority girls leveraged common historical narratives to build science narratives. Moreover, the girls’ identity work problematizes the commonplace instructional notion of “bridging” students’ everyday stories with science stories, which often privileges the science story and the composing of “science” identities. It also challenges researchers to investigate how the construction of narratives is broader than 1 community of practice, broader than 1 individual, and broader than 1 generation.     

Re/presenting a gender equity project: Contrasting visions and versions

This article provides three different accounts of a gender-equity project in a Grade 10 science class. The three stories, a realist one of victory over oppression, a realist story of inclusion, and a reflexive story of identity, illustrate different rhetorical forms for representing research and different assumptions about gender, pedagogy, equity, and the representation of data. Any version of a project can only be a partial account. As teachers and researchers, our commitments and investments influence our questions, understandings, and representations. The content and form of our stories imply particular relationships with an audience. Those responsible for policy tend to favor realist stories that reduce complexity and increase certainty. Others may be more interested in stories that portray complexity and highlight the need for judgments in particular contexts. No one form is appropriate for all occasions. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 859–876, 1998.     

Who's Afraid of the Bad Little Fowl?

The question this article addresses is: Is “Artemis” art? That is, how successful is Eoin Colfer's attempt to combine disparate forms, such as fairy stories, science fiction stories and thrillers in the three “Artemis Fowl” novels? Basic elements of story, such as narrative stance, characterisation and plot, as well as some particularly contemporary issues relating to political correctness, are examined in the search for an answer to that question.     

An extension of the effects of the performance feedback system with secondary school students

The effects of the performance feedback system on the story writing behavior of grade-10 academic and grade-11 honors students was investigated with a reversal design. After establishing baseline composition rates in each classroom, an experimental condition consisting of explicit timing of the students' 5-min. composition period, self-scoring, and public posting of highest scores was introduced, removed, and reintroduced. In both classes, the introduction of the experimental condition led to marked increase in the number of words written by all students. Writing rates declined during the second baseline condition and increased again when the experimental package was reintroduced. In addition, teachers unaware of the purpose of the experiment rated randomly selected pairs of stories from each condition. The teachers found the stories written during the experimental condition to be superior to those written during the baseline condition.     

《外婆的日用家当》的叙事美学蕴含

《外婆的日用家当》(Everyday Use)是美国黑人女作家艾丽斯.沃克最著名的短篇小说之一,其最大的特点在于作者运用叙述的角度和手法来表现文章的意义。本文从第一人称见证人的叙事方式、女性主义叙事视角、隐喻的叙事技巧和反讽的叙事技巧四个方面探讨小说的叙事美学特点,从而更加深刻地展示美国黑人民族文化的主题。     

A rose in a mirror

In this paper I reflect on the idea of a person as constructed through their actions, in science and otherwise, and the role of the teacher in enabling such action. I write, drawing on my own history in science and the imaging technologies in which I am presently involved, about how these shape the work I do with children and teachers in schools. I purposely try to make the science I do with children reflect the science I did as a scientist and it is in this context that the children act. This environment is illustrated in two stories. In the first the children are looking at lenses and discussing their qualities and the things they are able to see as they gaze through them. This conversation illuminates both the qualities of lenses, the role of the observer, and of the act of seeing. In the second story I argue that the, way I shape the classroom is in effect a lens through which we can view children. What we see through such a lens has the same qualities as the things the children and I talk about in the first story and such visions both shape and are shaped by my actions as a teacher.     

Telling and Retelling Our Stories on the Professional Knowledge Landscape

Drawing on a 3-year study focusing on the shaping influences of the professional knowledge landscape on the personal practical knowledge of experienced teachers, we first explore how stories are shaped as they are told and responded to in different places and, second, explore whether or not this sharing leads to imagining new possibilities for retelling and reliving stories. By sharing and exploring a story of a disagreement between a parent and a teacher, we focus on what we do when we tell stories in schools and what we do when we tell stories off the school landscape. In making meaning from this story, we show that both in the teacher's living of the story with the parent and in her numerous recountings of the story to others on the school landscape, she did not have opportunities to figure out new ways to relive the story. In our research group, she shared her story again. In this telling, we asked her to focus on who she, the mother, and the principal are in the story, and we inquire into what plotlines each were living. We ask questions about how they were positioned as characters in relation to one another. Re-searching the story in this way enabled us to understand the embodied nature of the teacher's knowing and how this knowledge shaped the events of the story as they were lived out, particularly how the teacher's living of a relational story countered the story of teacher and principal as positioned above parent. By drawing on Nelson's work on 'found' and 'chosen' communities, we imagine ways in which schools could become chosen communities where the story of school might be one of fostering the living out of multiple stories. We imagine the stories emerging from such communities might significantly shape the landscape of schools by opening up new possibilities for living in relation with others.     

《十日谈》的理论基础和道德原则浅析

《十日谈》以100个故事的形式开近代短篇小说之先河。这100个故事虽然取材于古代世界和现实生活、意大利本土和世界各国,但却有一个共同的理论基础和道德原则,从而在各个故事中形成一个共同的思想倾向。这个共同的理论基础和道德原则,就是以自然本性为核心的人性理论;以追求现世幸福为核心的幸福主义原则。我们在研究《十日谈》的过程中,只要抓住了这个理论基础和道德原则,就能抓住解开各个故事之迷的钥匙。     

The Art of Paradox

Edgar Allen Poe had written a lot of excellent short stories during his lifetime and had a strong influence on American Litera ture.His famous masterpiece,The Fall of the House of Usher,shares a lot of features that other short stories of Poe have possessed,and is also an excellent collection and conveyance of the art of paradox.This article will provide a rough analysis on the paradoxical art by careful reading and comparing details in the short story.