THE SWEET TYRANNY OF CREATING ONE'S OWN LIFE: RETHINKING POWER AND FREEDOM IN ENGLISH TEACHING

In this historical study of English teaching, Jory Brass adopts a governmentality perspective to highlight the contingency and limits of pedagogical arguments that construct an oppositional relation between power and freedom. In the first part of the essay, Brass historicizes contemporary critiques of transmission pedagogies by comparing them with touchstone pedagogical texts of the 1890s through the 1920s. Next, he revisits two early twentieth‐century pedagogical frameworks to identify links among power, freedom, choice, and social norms that are obscured in contemporary pedagogical writing. Finally, Brass examines a popular contemporary text, Deborah Appleman's Critical Encounters in High School English, to highlight how its strategy to foster adolescents' freedom and empowerment inscribes social patterns of power and regulation. The study denaturalizes oppositional accounts of power and freedom so that scholars and teachers may scrutinize how power circulates when English is positioned to govern how students understand and conduct themselves as free, responsible, and empowered subjects.     

TO BECOME ONE'S OWN MEDIATOR

Promoted by the Free University of Brussels, supported by the EEC, the transnational action‐research “To become one's own mediator” is applying and evaluating a violence prevention programme in elementary schools. We are creating and introducing the programme to the children (ages 8 to 10) and training the educational personnel. Inquiries are being made: questionnaire on transgressions, semi‐directive conversation about definitions of “violence”, test of attitudes in front of situations including social interaction, etc… Through that action research, our goal is to encourage our decision makers to include socio‐emotional programme in the school basic cognitive training. (It should be noted by U.K. readers that ‘violence’ is used in European research to describe acts of incivility. The role of a primary school teacher is also less global For example children will usually be supervised outside the classroom by people employed for that task).     

教师知识和教学的知识基础

作者把一切与专业有关的洞察力都看做教学的知识基础,认为它们与教师的行为有着内在的联系。由此,本文提出要把教师知识或者教师的实践性知识和正式的命题知识纳入教学的知识基础当中。虽然教师知识与个人经历及情境有着紧密的联系,但教师知识的某些特征却为所有的教师或大部分教师所共同拥有。研究教师知识就是要找出这些共同特征,从而对教师知识的复杂性和特殊性做出公正的评价,但这在方法论上可能存在困难。为了说明教师知识研究的潜在益处以及局限,作者呈现了几种研究的结果。这些研究的一个主要结论是,理解教师知识不仅能够改进教师教育而且能够促进教育改革的成功。最后,作者指出未来研究的三个重要领域。     

高师物理专业电磁学和电动力学课程整合与教学创新

讨论了高师物理专业电磁学和电动力学课程整合的必要性和可行性,提出了改革现有课程体系、教学内容、教学方法和教学手段的一些具体设想。希望为促进教学内容与教学结构的深层次改革,实现传统教学模式的创新,改善教与学的效果,提高学生的研究性学习能力和创新能力提供有益的参考。     

MY OWN OPINONS ON THE TEACHING OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Reform and the opening to the outside world needs English teaching and English teaching needs reform. How to reform it and promote the English level of our whole nation as early as possible? This paper puts forward four suggestions macroscopically in that connection:1. To take a correct attitude towards different teaching methods or approaches. 2. To teach a foreign language through the native language. 3. To compile suitable textbooks. 4. To reform the method of the present examination.     

ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS COLLABORATION IN MATHEMATICS TEACHER EDUCATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATHEMATICAL KNOWLEDGE FOR TEACHING

In this article the authors describe their efforts to support teachers' development of deep, connected understandings of school mathematics and to find ways to make use of the teachers' learning as a context for subsequent mathematical and pedagogical development. The authors detail the evolution of their model for Online Asynchronous Collaboration (OAC), which is grounded in current research in mathematics teacher education and that takes advantage of the collaborative nature of the Internet and the permanent nature of the online interactions. They believe that OAC is a promising practice in teacher education and will discuss both the rationale for their design decisions and provide examples of teachers' activity within OAC.     

隐性教学主体抑制教师主体性的反思

进行主体性教育，关键在于教师的主体性。在系统整体的教学活动中，显性教学主体（教师与学生）和隐性教学主体共同构成教学主体，且相互影响和制约。隐性教学主体主要包括教育行政管理者、教学理论工作者等，他们在其活动中存在抑制教师主体性的诸多问题。教师的主体性对学生主体性乃至教育教学都有重大影响，因此必须努力解决这些问题，以便充分发挥教师的主体性。     

EVALUATING A TEACHER RESEARCHER'S CHOICE OF ACTION RESEARCH

In this paper I discuss my reasons for choosing educational action research in my enquiry into the process of writing, redrafting, learning and autonomy in the examination years (Eames, 1987). I look first of all at my own interests as a teacher‐researcher, and then explore my reasons for rejecting the ‘dominant research paradigms, which seemed to me inappropriate for what I was trying to do. I explain what I understand by action research, and examine objections to it, as well as considering its strengths.     

PROMOTING EFFECTIVE SCIENCE TEACHER EDUCATION AND SCIENCE TEACHING: A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHER DECISION-MAKING

Learning and effective teaching are both complicated acts. However, many administrators, teachers, parents, and policymakers appear not to recognize those complexities and their significance for practice. Fueling this perception, recommendations from isolated research findings often neglect the complexities in learning and teaching, and when implemented in classrooms often fall well short of the advertised effect. Consequently, education research is generally ignored, and the resulting research-practice gap raises concerns regarding the utility of university-based teacher education, and education research more generally. However, the strength of education research resides in the synergy resulting from its integration into a unifying system that guides, but does not determine, decision-making. Dewey (1929) argued for teacher decision-making guided by education research, but recently several writers have justly criticized education researchers for not providing comprehensible assistance to educators and policymakers (Good, 2007; Shymansky, 2006; Windschitl, 2005). This paper proposes a decision-making framework for teaching to help beginning and experienced teachers make sense of education research, come to understand crucial teacher decisions, and how those decisions interact to affect student learning. The proposed decision-making framework for teaching has significant utility in the design of science methods courses, science teacher education programs, effective student teacher supervision experiences, and professional development workshops.     

THE ROLE OF THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHER

The teaching of reading is complicated by the fact that no one commercially produced set of ‘readers’ is adequate in all respects for the development of reading skills. The article which follows provides guidelines by which a complete reading scheme can be developed from a combination of reading schemes; including consideration of such fundamentals as compatibility of vocabulary, degree of repetition, phonic criteria and the selection of supplementary reading material.

This article has been prepared as a result of the author's conviction that no single available reading scheme alone provides sufficient material in the depth or variety necessary to effect the acquisition of reading skills by the normal child. The objective of the study described below was to establish a reading system which would, as nearly as possible, provide a continuous progression of reading material suitable for the wide range of ability of children passing through an infant school. For obvious reasons, the reading material needs to be selected from that which is commercially available and marketed as purportedly complete reading schemes.     

TEACHER DISTRESS AND THE ROLE OF EXPERIENTIAL AVOIDANCE

Teachers’ psychological well‐being is important for teachers and students, but teaching is highly stressful, particularly in special education. We examined the role of experiential avoidance (EA) in the well‐being of 529 middle and elementary school teachers. EA involves the tendency to avoid thoughts, feelings, and other internal experiences, even when doing so causes long‐range consequences. Using a teacher‐specific measure, we investigated EA's relationship to stress associated with student misbehavior and limited social support. We also assessed EA's relationship to burnout and depression, finding EA significantly and moderately correlated with depression and all scales of Maslach's Burnout Inventory. Mediation analyses showed EA mediated the relationship between stress associated with student behavior and measures of well‐being. We found 26.8% of teachers to be mildly, 8.9% moderately, and 2.8% moderately severely or severely depressed. This evidence concurs with studies showing the value of mindfulness‐based interventions and points to the utility of implementing interventions aimed at decreasing EA in teachers.