School disciplines,social representations,and the construction of the didactics of history,geography, and civics

The author presents a concept of the didactics of history, geography, and civics that seeks to link, through a single dynamic, the civic, political, and social goals of school knowledge with everyday classroom practice and pupils' learning. Two concepts occupy the heart of this construction: those of school disciplines and social representations. The concept of school disciplines addresses the fact that school knowledge is a creation of the school, designed to enable it to achieve the social goals it is assigned. A school discipline is thus a particular combination of goals, content (in the form of shared knowledge), methods, and practices. The concept of social representations is a tool serving to analyze knowledge as theories of the natural and social world, its production, and its reception by the different actors involved.     

Kierkegaard,musical performance,and the relation and differentiation of the sexes

This paper is a critical evaluation of what is believed by the author to be Kierkegaard's subjective, ambivalent, and arbitrary stereotyping of women. In particular, the paper examines the Kierkegaardian notion of equality, essential feminine characteristics, and finitude. The result is an attempt to apply Kierkegaard's ideas to those issues pertaining to inequality in musical performance; as well, a plea is made for the demystification of the notion of woman as whore or Madonna.     

Cowan,Whiteness, Resistance to Brown,and the Persistence of the Past

In this paper, I examine the use of litigation as a strategic tool of resistance for thwarting school desegregation. Utilizing Cowan v. Bolivar County Board of Education as a case study, I argue that, despite losing the constitutional right to racially segregate public schools according to an explicit white supremacist doctrine, whites in Bolivar County, Mississippi, were successful in stemming the impending tide of social change associated with school desegregation through litigation. Litigious resistance not only provided southern whites with a racially moderate epistemology for undermining school desegregation regionally, but their legal challenges to school desegregation also laid the groundwork for non-southern white animus toward all federal education policies that promoted racial inclusion.     

Plato, Dewey, and the Problem of the Teacher's Authority

ABSTRACT An examination of contemporary publications in the philosophy of education reveals that the authority of the teacher is being eroded. As teachers derive their authority from the democratic state and its compulsory education laws, the undermining of their authority indicates the undermining of the authority of the democratic state and its laws. A comparison between Plato and Dewey from this point of view reveals that this state of affairs is the upshot of the collision between the principle of authority and the principle of liberty, and that this collision constitutes the basic problem of democracy as well as of education for democracy. The challenge to contemporary education is consequently that of exploring ways leading to the rehabilitation of the authority of the teacher.     

Femininity,science, and the denigration of the girly girl

Hyper-femininity and the construction of the ‘girly girl’ label have been documented widely, but there has been less attention to their content (or any distinctions between these constructs). Indeed, it can be argued that the content of femininity remains a controversial and somewhat under-researched topic in feminist scholarship. This is also the case in relation to science, which has been widely characterised as a masculine terrain, but there has been less attention to why femininity is excluded from/by science. This article attempts to unpick some of these issues, with a particular focus on the construct of the ‘girly girl’, in relation to access to science. Drawing on qualitative data from the Economic and Social Research Council-funded ASPIRES 2 project, we analyse the discourses used by young people and parents in discussion of ‘girly girls’ and physics. We show the misogynist and excluding discourses projected onto the ‘girly girl’, and indeed that are used to interpolate femininity more broadly. We found that in discussions of science and (hyper-)femininity, even potentially positive feminine attributes were denigrated. Hyper-femininity was produced as ‘more than lack’: vacuous, but also a risible presence. In reflecting on our findings we consider whether femininity may be more derided in some discursive contexts (e.g. science discourse) than others, and whether femininity can or should be conceived as more than lack.     

Community Colleges,the Media,and the Rhetoric of Inevitability

Community college practitioners frequently bemoan negative or stereotypical representations of community college students and community college life in general in the popular media. Saturday Night Live skits and satirical news reports in The Onion enjoy poking fun at community colleges, while mainstream news outlets often fail to challenge stereotypes of community colleges as lacking academic rigor. Those frustrated by these portrayals should know that the press overwhelmingly lauded 2 year colleges during the early decades of the “junior college” movement. Such reporting celebrated the new institutions' missions, and praised their speedy growth as components of public education. In fact, the press often implied that these new campuses reflected an inevitable step in the evolution of American higher education. This paper analyzes media reports about public 2 year colleges (at the time called junior colleges) published during the 1920s and 1930s. The term junior college is used in this historical review since the term was common during the era in question.     

主位理论、主位推进模式与翻译

借助功能语言学主位和主位推进模式有关理论来分析语篇的衔接、信息分布、连贯、语篇发展以及译者如何利用这些分析结果充分解读翻译源文,在以语篇为翻译单位时,采取何种相应的翻译对策,生成在功能和效果上与之相当的目的语语篇。     

Social and ethical dimension of the natural sciences, complex problems of the age, interdisciplinarity, and the contribution of education

In view of the complex problems of this age, the question of the socio-ethical dimension of science acquires particular importance. We approach this matter from a philosophical and sociological standpoint, looking at such focal concerns as the motivation, purposes and methods of scientific activity, the ambivalence of scientific research and the concomitant risks, and the conflict between research freedom and external socio-political intervention. We then point out the impediments to the effectiveness of cross-disciplinary or broader meetings for addressing these complex problems and managing the associated risks, given the difficulty in communication between experts in different fields and non-experts, difficulties that education is challenged to help resolve. We find that the social necessity of informed decision-making on the basis of cross-disciplinary collaboration is reflected in the newer curricula, such as that of Greece, in aims like the acquisition of cross-subject knowledge and skills, and the ability to make decisions on controversial issues involving value conflicts. The interest and the reflections of the science education community in these matters increase its—traditionally limited—contribution to the theoretical debate on education and, by extension, the value of science education in the education system.     

魏晋南北朝隋唐时期民族史观的演变

魏晋南北朝隋唐时期是中国历史上民族史观发生突出变化的历史阶段。这种变化从它的历史形式来说,体现在民族观与民族政策等方面;从史学形式来说,则在史家的主体认识、史书的编撰思想中得到了更为具体、深入的体现;在民族理论问题上,正反两方面的理论总结,成为历史形式与史学形式相结合的产物,并勾勒出这一时期民族史观演进的大致轨迹。     

Space,relations, and the learning of science

In the literature on the situated and distributed nature of cognition, the coordination of spatial organization and the structure of human practices and relations is accepted as a fact. To date, science educators have yet to build on such research. Drawing on an ethnographic study of high school students during an internship in a scientific research laboratory, which we understand as a “perspicuous setting” and a “smart setting,” in which otherwise invisible dimensions of human practices become evident, we analyze the relationship between spatial configurations of the setting and the nature and temporal organization of knowing and learning in science. Our analyses show that spatial aspects of the laboratory projectively organize how participants act and can serve as resources to help the novices to participate in difficult and unfamiliar tasks. First, existing spatial relations projectively organize the language involving interns and lab members. In particular, spatial relations projectively organize where and when pedagogical language should happen; and there are specific discursive mechanisms that produce cohesion in language across different places in the laboratory. Second, the spatial arrangements projectively organize the temporal dimensions of action. These findings allow science educators to think explicitly about organizing “smart contexts” that help learners participate in and learn complex scientific laboratory practices.     

Mastery,insight, and the teaching of chemistry

The learning of chemistry is described as a process analogous to the process of making chemical discoveries. Historical examples are given to show how chemists have used their insight to break out of a conceptual loop in order to advance the science. Having the insight to make the intuitive leap necessary to break a conceptual loop is as important as having the mastery of the pertinent facts. As in making chemical discoveries, learning elementary chemistry requires developing insight as well as acquiring mastery of the facts. However, current general chemistry teaching tends to teach facts first and insight later. Suggestions for improving this situation so that insight and facts are learned together are given. Finally, the nature of insight is probed more deeply and presented as a two-step process where the first step is an evaluation of the perceptions about science which are held. Once the student, teacher, or researcher has a clear evaluation of the validity of the perceptions that he or she holds, further significant progress toward understanding or scientific discovery is possible.     

Philosophy,education, and the explosion of knowledge

In science, and in the teaching of science, knowinghow is as important as knowingthat. The value of theoretical knowledge is limited, especially so in view of the rapid increase in available information. Methodological analysis of concrete problems should play a major role in teaching. Also, students should learn to contextualize problems in disciplines other than their major area of interest. Generalists are badly needed for this, in teaching and in research. However, current forms of interdisciplinary integration must be de-emphasized.     

Multimedia,Hypermedia, and the Culture of Schooling

No abstract available for this article.     

Learning, change, and the utopia of play

This article looks at some of the rhetoric surrounding video games and other forms of interactive software as additions or alternatives to school curricula. It focuses particularly on the need to articulate ways to “read” videogames in order to achieve significant cultural impact. Noting that reading, even as metaphor, tends to invoke inappropriate assumptions about writing and authorship, the article argues for a less backward-looking approach to newer forms.     

Pedagogy,philosophy, and the question of creativity

This paper investigates the prominence of rationalism in the major Western pedagogical theories of Plato, Rousseau, and Dewey, all of whom conceptualize formal teaching, as the inculcation of rationality in individual learners. After each of their theories has been described, the argument turns against the tradition of pedagogical rationalism to question what happens in the education of artists, quasi-artists, and creative designers. The answer given is that imagination must be paramount and strongly encouraged in the education of such students, despite the problematic fact that imagination – seeing the truth – cannot be taught the way that rationality can, relying instead on the analysis of successful works of art and design as exemplary and allowing students to freely pursue their own individual inspirations.