PROLEGOMENA TO A NEW ACADEMIC RESPONSIBILITY: WHAT IT MEANS TO KNOW AND THE UNIVERSITY

In this essay, Peter Trifonas tries to show that there is no overcoming of the techno-philosophical grounding of intellectual freedom and academic responsibility or research action within the speculum of an all-seeing, all-knowing university. Instead, he argues that through Derrida's notion of an open "community of the question," deconstruction has the promise to infuse the university and its teaching body with the play of difference in interpretation and invention that will produce new forms of knowledge and an altered academic responsibility. This new academic responsibility born of a deconstruction of the university and its closed system of disciplinary logic is worked out as a performative intelligibility or an inkling of purpose "yet-to-come" ( avenir ). The call for an open community of research around questions and not disciplines displays the ethical undercurrent of a new kind of academic responsibility—a responsibility negotiated both within the extant community and between that community and those to whom the highly problematic "we" of "higher" education are more or less ultimately accountable: the State and the political constituency of public society.     

THE HISTELEA PROJECT: THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE TEACHING OF READING AND WRITING IN ARGENTINA

This paper reflects the preliminary results of the HISTELEA project ‐The Social History of the Teaching of Reading and Writing in Argentina ‐, carried out by the Social History of Education research group, at the National University of Luján, Argentina. Our approach within a sodai history of education implies understanding and analyzing complex social, political, economic and cultural processes that are articulated in the discourses and practices of the teaching of reading and writing in Argentina. From this perspective, we analyse its potential to better understand the following issues: the construction of the concept of “reading & writing,"the school‐literacy relationship, the constitution of tbe pedagogicfield, and the making of school texts.

     

THE SUBVERSIVE CURRICULUM: WHAT RELIGIOUS EDUCATORS ARE LEARNING INFORMALLY AND INCIDENTALLY

This study examines the informal and incidental learning that occurred among ten religious educators in the Roman Catholic school system in Newfoundland. In phase one, two researchers conducted focus groups and administered questionnaires to collect data. In phase two, one of the researchers conducted individual interviews with study participants. The types of learning identified are classified into three categories: theological knowledge, professional knowledge, and knowledge about oneself. The learning reported is then discussed in relation to the informal‐ and incidental‐learning theory of Karen Watkins and Victoria Marsick.     

EDUCATION AS AN AFFIRMATIVE INVENTION: ALAIN BADIOU AND THE PURPOSE OF TEACHING AND CURRICULUM

Schools can be places where students articulate a preferred social future and exercise informed judgment with others toward that goal. Yet, educators have few examples of what a curriculum explicitly concerned with undertaking such a process might look like. Distinct from questions about how best to receive an Other or social science investigations of what may constitute educational “best practices,” Kent den Heyer explores here the ways in which the work of Alain Badiou provides for a more proactive arrangement of knowledge in schools organized to instigate truth‐processes that might supplement individual and socially inherited commitments. Through this exploration, den Heyer argues for the democratic and life‐affirming benefits of scholars and teachers who take up a “disciplinary ethic of truths.” He provides one of potentially many curricular examples of such an arrangement of knowledge.     

TEACHING ABOUT THE LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE: A CLASS PROJECT

The life course perspective is a dynamic framework that attends to individual and family lives within historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. Students of the life course are increasingly interested in how such a perspective can be used to understand family lives. Opportunities for students to examine the utility of the life course perspective to family gerontology may enhance their understanding of the perspective's content and application with older family relationships. Students in a graduate course with a focus on life course and family gerontology completed a project in which they identified life course concepts and developed a model that could be used to explain relationship interactions between immigrant mothers and their adult daughters. Student feedback indicated that the assignment sharpened their knowledge of life course concepts, made the concepts more "real," and increased their understanding of the connections between life course concepts. Suggestions for incorporating this project in another graduate course and using a similar project in an undergraduate course are provided.     

COLLABORATION FOR A CURRICULUM OF CARING: THE ZEITGEIST IS RIGHT

Recent catastrophic school shootings have drawn worldwide attention to issues of gun control and mental health. In the wake of these tragedies, more and more schools have begun to adopt school‐wide social and emotional learning (SEL) programs. However, we have few examples of what it looks like to integrate SEL skills into content curricula. What's more, teachers and support professionals are ill‐equipped to engage in the collaborative work necessary to effectively integrate the teaching of SEL into academic content. The collaboration described herein highlights an interdisciplinary collaboration among university faculty and graduate students from school psychology and English education to collaboratively design and evaluate standards‐based secondary English curricula that foreground SEL and themes of care.     

《托玛斯·莫尔--跨越时代的巨人》剧本及影片的教学与研究设想

<托玛斯·莫尔--跨越时代的巨人>是英国作家罗伯特·波特创作的一部舞台戏剧,并将该剧改变成了曾多次获奖的好莱坞电影剧本.笔者认为该剧非常适合在中国进行教学与研究.文章首先介绍了剧作家罗伯特·波特的生活和工作情况.波特曾在英格兰和美国编写过舞台戏剧和电影剧本.文章继而介绍了该剧的主人翁--英国的大学校长托玛斯·莫尔先生.莫尔以作家(著有古典著作<乌托邦>)和法官而闻名.因此,研究该剧有助于将他们介绍给中国的读者.然后文章说明理由,为什么该戏剧和电影对中国的教学与研究有作用.其中该戏剧和电影里的对话几乎是一样的,因而两种形式均可采用.此外,文章为读者介绍了在英汉两种语言中一些对研究者和教师而言可利用的实用信息.最后,该文作者以在中国的亲身教学经历提出了一些建议.     

CLASSROOM RESEARCH IN CHURCH AND SYNAGOGUE: HOW LAY VOLUNTEERS CAN PRACTICE THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING

The scholarship of teaching involves an understanding and application of the latest discoveries in the field of instructional excellence.