Mathematical biography and key rhetoric

The intention of this article is to consider the use of narrative and rhetorical inquiry as research methods. I construct a mathematical biography of one elementary teacher trainee, Sirpa, who had performed well in her advanced mathematics course in upper secondary school. I describe her development as a mathematics teacher during teacher education from her second-year methods course and teaching practice to fourth-year teaching practice. Narrative inquiry is more than a case study: Sirpa’s mathematical biography is a story that describes how she constructs her mathematical identity. I also analysed the key rhetoric that Sirpa used in her talk, key rhetoric here referring to the strategy by which she constructed continuity and coherence.     

Dialogic inquiry in life science conversations of family groups in a museum

This research illustrates the efficacy of a new approach for collecting and analyzing family conversational data at museums and other informal settings. This article offers a detailed examination of a small data set (three families) that informs a larger body of work that focuses on conversation as methodology. The dialogic content of this work centers on biological themes, specifically adaptation. The biological principle becomes visible when families talk about survival strategies such as breeding or protection from predators. These themes arise from both the family members and the museum exhibit. This study also analyzes the inquiry skills families use as they make sense of science content. I assume that children and adults offer different interest areas or expertise for dialogic negotiation and that family members use inquiry skills in dialogue to explore matters of importance. This analysis offers educators methodological tools for investigating families' scientific sense‐making in informal settings. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 138–162, 2003     

Return of the ghost – to discipline or/and to teach?

This paper is a situated biographical reflection on the author's Hong Kong teaching experience written using a narrative inquiry approach, describing attempts to generate innovative pedagogical practices. The journey explores how autocratic, traditional Chinese cultural expectations in Hong Kong education have nurtured a commonsense belief in “discipline first and then teach”. This teacher/researcher adopted alternative approaches to authority through the use of developmental drama which made teacher image and teacher–student power relationships an object of talk and study. The aim of this paper is to bring together theories and pedagogical models based on the sociology of education, social psychology and drama pedagogy in an effort to change how we teach marginalized students in one distinctive Chinese cultural context.     

The secret between storytelling and retelling: tea,school, & narrative

In this paper, I will tell two of my personal stories to try to explore the secret or opaque space between the original telling and retelling of stories in narrative inquiry. Based upon my difficult struggles with the two stories of tea, school, and narrative, I suggest that narrative inquiry has to be a complex loop of relationship, reflexivity, responsibility, and recursion.     

From Words to Concepts: Focusing on Word Knowledge When Teaching for Conceptual Understanding Within an Inquiry-Based Science Setting

This qualitative video study explores how two elementary school teachers taught for conceptual understanding throughout different phases of science inquiry. The teachers implemented teaching materials with a focus on learning science key concepts through the development of word knowledge. A framework for word knowledge was applied to examine the students’ level of word knowledge manifested in their talk. In this framework, highly developed knowledge of a word is conceptual knowledge. This includes understanding how the word is situated within a network of other words and ideas. The results suggest that students’ level of word knowledge develops toward conceptual knowledge when the students are required to apply the key concepts in their talk throughout all phases of inquiry. When the students become familiar with the key concepts through the initial inquiry activities, the students use the concepts as tools for furthering their conceptual understanding when they discuss their ideas and findings. However, conceptual understanding is not promoted when teachers do the talking for the students, rephrasing their responses into the correct answer or neglecting to address the students’ everyday perceptions of scientific phenomena.     

Elementary School Students’ Science Talk Ability in Inquiry-Oriented Settings in Taiwan: Test Development,Verification, and Performance Benchmarks

The purpose of this study was to develop a computer-based measure of elementary students’ science talk and to report students’ benchmarks. The development procedure had three steps: defining the framework of the test, collecting and identifying key reference sets of science talk, and developing and verifying the science talk instrument. The Science Talk Test (STT), consisting of semi-structured items, was developed for a framework of exemplars from inquiry classrooms representing three inquiry components (i.e. identifying questions, designing methods and presenting evidence, and drawing evidence-based conclusions) for two types of science talk (i.e. factually oriented and evaluative discourses). Grades 4 and 6 students (N = 281) were selected from three levels of urbanization representative of Taiwan to verify the STT and to establish performance benchmarks. The STT’s reliability, validity, and item parameters were found to be reasonable. Students performed better in the factually oriented talk than in the evaluative talk. Designing methods and presenting evidence was more difficult than the other two types of inquiry talk. Students’ science talk ability was predictable with prior scientific knowledge and language ability measures. Practical use of the STT, explicit instruction, and future research are recommended.     

The interplay of representations and patterns of classroom discourse in science teaching sequences

The purpose of this study is to examines the relationship between the communicative approach of classroom talk and the modes of representations used by science teachers. Based on video data from two physics classrooms in Singapore, a recurring pattern in the relationship was observed as the teaching sequence of a lesson unfolded. It was found that as the mode of representation shifted from enactive (action based) to iconic (image based) to symbolic (language based), there was a concurrent and coordinated shift in the classroom communicative approach from interactive–dialogic to interactive–authoritative to non-interactive–authoritative. Specifically, the shift from enactive to iconic to symbolic representations occurred mainly within the interactive–dialogic approach while the shift towards the interactive–authoritative and non-interactive–authoritative approaches occurred when symbolic modes of representation were used. This concurrent and coordinated shift has implications on how we conceive the use of representations in conjunction with the co-occurring classroom discourse, both theoretically and pedagogically.     

浅谈"合作探究式教学法"在武术对练教学中的运用

“合作探究式教学法”是以一种注重相互合作、强调探究创新的教学方法,其在激发学生的学习兴趣和创新潜能、培养学生的合作意识和创新能力等方面优势明显。笔者认为这种教学方法适宜于武术对练教学的特点与要求。文章探析了“合作探究式教学法”在武术对练教学过程中的具体运用,指出了在传授知识阶段的讲解示范中应突出强调攻防含义,在合作探索阶段应积极构建平等合作关系,在评价运用阶段应大力倡导求异创新精神。     

Reducing students’ ‘absent presenteeism’ and mobile misbehaviour in class: an empirical study of teacher perspectives and practices

ABSTRACT

Advances in information technology and communication through new social media platforms have enormous benefits in many contexts, including education. At the same time, self-distractive use of technology – or ‘absent presenteeism’ – can have negative effects in the classroom. The main research question of this study is the relationship between organisational leadership, enforcement of discipline and self-distractive use of technology in the secondary school setting. The finding indicated that the permissive style of discipline appeared to be the most effective at reducing self-distractive mobile phone use. However, a more authoritative style of discipline, short teacher tenure and the principal’s transformational leadership style contributed to high self-distractive mobile phone use. The authors rely on empirical data collected in Israeli public high schools from two independent sources: 144 teachers and 591 students, which yielded 4440 teacher-student events. Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the school setting characterised by rapid changes in technology.     

A voice without organs: interviewing in posthumanist research

In keeping with the editor’s call for this special issue, this paper discusses how a posthumanist stance has enabled me to materialize a different conception of the interview and interview data in postqualitative inquiry. More specifically, I am thinking with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept, the Body without Organs, one they use to enact thinking without a subject and to liberate thought from overcoded images in order to confront a reliance on objects or material representations to understand and explain. Using this concept, I theorize a Voice without Organs (VwO) as a voice that does not emanate from a singular subject but is produced in an enactment among research-data-participants-theory-analysis. The article concludes with an analysis of data from a recent interview project that illustrates how VwO is both produced by and producing different knowledge and suggests implications for thinking interviewing and interview data differently.     

Leading Deep Conversations in Collaborative Inquiry Groups

Collaborative inquiry groups, such as professional learning communities and lesson study groups, are proliferating in schools across the United States. In whatever form, the potential for impacting student learning through this collaborative work is expanded or limited by the nature of teachers’ conversations. Polite, congenial conversations remain superficially focused on sharing stories of practice, whereas collegial dialogue probes more deeply into teaching and learning. Examples of talk taken from collaborative teacher inquiry groups are used to illustrate these important differences. Specific recommendations are provided, including the role that teacher leaders can play in adopting and modeling specific strategies that support the use of more substantive professional conversation.     

Inquiry into Children's Mathematical Thinking as a Means to Teacher Change

In the context of U.S. and world wide educational reforms that require teachers to understand and respond to student thinking about mathematics in new ways, ongoing learning from practice is a necessity. In this paper we report on this process for one teacher in one especially productive year of learning. This case study documents how Ms. Statz's engagement with children's thinking changed dramatically in a period of only a few months; observations and interviews several years later confirm she sustained this change. Our analysis focuses on the mathematical discussions she had with her students, and suggests this talk with children about their thinking in instruction served both as an index of change, and, in combination with other factors, as a mechanism for change. We identified four phases in Ms. Statz's growth toward practical inquiry, distinguished by her use of interactive talk with children. Motivating the evolution of phases were two sorts of mechanisms: scaffolded examination of her students' thinking; and asking and answering questions about individual students' thinking. Processes for generating and testing knowledge about children's thinking ultimately became integrated into Ms. Statz's instructional practices as she created opportunities for herself, and then students, to hear and respond to children's thinking.     

Presidential Address: Culture and the future of education research

Recent changes in higher education have confronted education research with a conundrum: how our traditionally multidisciplinary field can refine itself as a unified discipline. In this address I sketch out what this conundrum may mean for education research, both substantively and methodologically, in the future. I propose that one starting point is for education researchers to consider what unites rather than divides us. One common, unifying conceptual concern is with the operation of culture/s in educational settings. I use the narratives of two teachers from different places and times to illustrate how culture analysis can be a fruitful tool for understanding the experience and practice of Education. In my conclusion, I extend the theme of culture to education research itself. I suggest that the challenge of disciplinary identity confronting education research requires a culture change in the modus operandi of our practice, and that this will involve an articulated focus on methodological pluralism, interdisciplinarity, and the use of new modes of communication as key unifying elements of the discipline of education research.     

Coordinating scaffolds for collaborative inquiry in a game-based learning environment

Collaborative inquiry learning affords educators a context within which to support understanding of scientific practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. One approach to supporting collaborative science inquiry is through problem-based learning (PBL). However, there are two key challenges in scaffolding collaborative inquiry learning in technology rich environments. First, it is unclear how we might understand the impact of scaffolds that address multiple functions (e.g., to support inquiry and argumentation). Second, scaffolds take different forms, further complicating how to coordinate the forms and functions of scaffolds to support effective collaborative inquiry. To address these issues, we identify two functions that needed to be scaffolded, the PBL inquiry cycle and accountable talk. We then designed predefined hard scaffolds and just-in-time soft scaffolds that target the regulation of collaborative inquiry processes and accountable talk. Drawing on a mixed method approach, we examine how middle school students from a rural school engaged with Crystal Island: EcoJourneys for two weeks (N=45). Findings indicate that hard scaffolds targeting the PBL inquiry process and soft scaffolds that targeted accountable talk fostered engagement in these processes. Although the one-to-one mapping between form and function generated positive results, additional soft scaffolds were also needed for effective engagement in collaborative inquiry and that these soft scaffolds were often contingent on hard scaffolds. Our findings have implications for how we might design the form of scaffolds across multiple functions in game-based learning environments.     

Apple Jumper,Teacher Babe,and Bland Uniformer Teachers: Fashioning Feminine Teacher Bodies

A student teacher group's conversation about teacher clothing as reflective of certain kinds of reprehensible or desirable teacher identities provoked the writing of this article. I use a feminist poststructuralist analysis to explore the three categories of women teachers' dress suggested by the student teachers as signifiers of women teachers' subjectivities discursively produced within the contexts of schooling. The article also challenges the three categories as constructions produced by this student teacher group in their positionality as young, White, middle-class, heterosexual female novice teachers in the Southeast region of the United States. This inquiry highlights the limitations and constrictions of women teachers' institutionalized subjectivities and suggests ways in which these limitations and constrictions offer sites for resistance, specifically in relation to clothing choices that shape and reflect a feminine teacher body.     

The mentor as artist: a poetic exploration of listening,creating, and mentoring

In this article I integrate the process of the artist with the practice of mentoring. The acts of listening to inquiry into their lives and research. Particular attention is made to the context of working with graduate students in a faculty of education. I specifically draw on arts‐based educational research methods to explore a poetic way of articulating the connection between the art of mentoring, leadership and art‐making. Highlighted is the relationship between a deep listening to ourselves and to each other as integral to expanding the notion of research to one of including our own lives as art‐works. Connections are made through poetic form to the natural world and the notion of mentoring as an invitation to the art of co‐creating.     

让探究之花在科学课堂绽放——如何切实有效地在小学科学课中进行探究式学习

培养学生的“科学素养”是时代发展对未来人才素质的需要．探索如何切实有效地在小学科学课中进行探究式学习,是深化课程改革的重要课题。在课堂中,教师要为学生提供探究的条件和教给学生探究方法;要让学生多动眼“看一看”,多动脑“想一想”,多动口“说一说”,多动手“做一做”,让学生勇于探究、敢于探究、善于探究、乐于探究、勤于探究,让探究之花在科学课堂美丽绽放。     

Interrupted experiences: reflection, listening and negativity in the practice of teaching

This inquiry explores the educative meaning of interruptions or breaks in teacher’s experiences by looking at their role in reflection and listening. Reflection and listening are not only two vital and distinct aspects of teaching, but are also interrelated and as such can serve to productively inform one another. In this context, I develop the notion of negativity of experience to describe the space that opens up when our experience has been in some way interrupted, the space where we dwell between old and new experiences and where new thoughts and ideas emerge. I demonstrate throughout my discussion that it is in this space that listening and reflection take place. To begin, I analyze the works of John Dewey and Donald Schön to take up a few particular aspects of reflective thinking and its relation to the practice of teaching. In this context, I point out similarities and important learning-theoretical differences between the notion of ‘negativity of experience’ and Schön’s notion of ‘messy situations’. The second section examines the role of negativity of experience in listening. Here, I seek to explore ways to include listening in the contemporary discussion on reflective teaching and practice. The inquiry concludes by considering the meaning of reflection, listening and negativity for the education of professional teachers.