Neuroscience and Education: Blind Spots in a Strange Relationship

This article—mainly referring to the situation in Germany—consists of three parts. In a first section the current presence of neurosciences in the public discourse will be described in order to illuminate the background which is relevant for contemporary educational thinking. The prefix ‘neuro‐’ is ubiquitous today and therefore concepts like ‘neuropedagogy’ or ‘neurodidactics’ seem to be in the mainstream of modern thinking. In the second part of the article the perspective changes from the public discourse to the disciplinary discourse; a brief excursus into developmental psychiatry, neuropsychology and modern psychoanalysis will be made in order to demonstrate how the results of neuroscientific research are integrated in their theoretical frameworks. These three disciplines have no difficulty in integrating neuroscientific findings because each of them possesses a systematic core composed of ‘native concepts’. In contrast to them, educational theory has much more difficulty with such integration, as will be shown in the third part of the essay. On the one hand, neuroscientific thinking seems to be able to dominate education rather easily and without great resistance, especially in the fields of early childhood education, instruction and learning—mainly by simplifying educational processes and by reducing the complexity of the educational task to a mere ‘relationship problem’. On the other hand, this attraction of neuroscience in education might be understood as the reflection of a theoretical deficit in educational theory itself, with the significance of affect and emotion not receiving proper attention.     

Capturing the Complexity of Practice: A self-study in the context of engineering education

This article is based on a project in which a teacher educator, acting as a critical friend, worked with six engineering teachers in a Masters program in Machine Engineering in order to stimulate their reflection on their own teaching and learning as a way of developing their scholarship of teaching. The article draws particular attention to ways of expressing the learning from self-study in order to illuminate the complexities of teaching and to begin to encourage the articulation of the scholarship of teaching as a consequence of a collaborative experience. The results highlight how making teaching visible through the use of self-study offers new ways to capture the complexity of practice, which in this article is considered to be an important aspect of developing the scholarship of teaching.     

Making Design Education (Even More) Complex: Exploring Complexity for an Amplified Mindset of Design

An Amplified Mindset of Design (AMD) has emerged from recent research on emerging design practices, as designers are once again re‐inventing their identity to include an adaptability to uncertainty and paradox. However, this is not yet visible in what design education offers. As designers intervene in complex contexts and embrace participatory, collaborative and interdisciplinary practices informed by strong ethical and sustainability concerns, design education must adjust and expand its scope to include, for example, collaboration, cross‐cultural and interdisciplinary skills, and a way of being in the world through design. In this article, I argue for the formal introduction and exploration of social complexity in design education to assist the development of an AMD in design students. Boundaries, dependence on context, edge of chaos, emergence and organisation were identified as key qualities of complex systems to introduce to students. Embodiment and visualisation techniques were used as the most appropriate vehicles for such an endeavour. In this article, I discuss the results of a qualitative research informed by action research in which I explore ways of teaching complexity to design students. The inquiry was driven by the following core research question: How can complexity can be taught in design education using visual and embodiment methods to encourage the development of an Amplified Mindset of Design?     

Structured Collaboration versus Individual Learning in Solving Physics Problems

The research issue in this study is how to structure collaborative learning so that it improves solving physics problems more than individual learning. Structured collaborative learning has been compared with individual learning environments with Schoenfeld’s problem‐solving episodes. Students took a pre‐test and a post‐test and had the opportunity to solve six physics problems. Ninety‐nine students from a secondary school in Shanghai participated in the study. Students who learnt to solve problems in collaboration and students who learnt to solve problems individually with hints improved their problem‐solving skills compared with those who learnt to solve the problems individually without hints. However, it was hard to discern an extra effect for students working collaboratively with hints—although we observed these students working in a more structured way than those in the other groups. We discuss ways to further investigate effective collaborative processes for solving physics problems.     

Being in the users' shoes: Anticipating experience while designing online courses

While user‐centred design and user experience are given much attention in the e‐learning design field, no research has been found on how users are actually represented in the discussions during the design of online courses. In this paper we identify how and when end‐users' experience—be they students or tutors—emerges in designers' discussions during their meetings in well‐established open universities. More precisely, we observed 15 design meetings of two design teams during the development of specific online courses. Designers' discourse was analysed on the basis of six dimensions regarding relevant actors, contents and strategies (purposes) of user experience anticipation. Results show the emergence of a solution‐oriented anticipatory discourse in form of scenarios regarding how learners and tutors will react to the course and the proposed activities. Moreover, this discourse is related to an emergent type of users‐based expertise, translated as the capacity of some designers to empathise with the end‐users more than other designers do. The participation of designers with this type of expertise in e‐learning design teams emerges as relevant for the decisions related to the course activities, interface or overall experience. Further research is invited towards this direction. Further discussion on this article can be found in “Being in the users' shoes: Is there maybe another way?” (DOI: 10.1111/bjet.12104 ).     

Voluntary organizations and the contribution to social justice in schools: learning from a case study

Partnerships are seen as vital to the functioning of many social institutions and the contribution that the private and voluntary not‐for‐profit sector organizations can make to the provision of statutory services is particularly valued. The Church of England Children’s Society Genesis project worked for nearly 5 years in one urban, secondary school with a remit to promote inclusion. Despite much recorded good work, Genesis was not continued after its contract ended. The school had a series of head teachers and was in special measures for part of the period, but key problems centred around the extent of the project’s contribution to the school’s core business and the absence of a positive management of the multi‐professional project by the school. The evaluation examines ways of proceeding which are of relevance to more complex projects. The paper also reviews the place of voluntary and non‐profit making organizations in meeting current challenges to collaborative, multi‐agency working and proposes a more robust, directive, and managerialist approach to make the most efficient and effective use of the resources and expertise of voluntary and statutory agencies (Inter‐agency Czar and Stalinist environment!). Genesis has gone on to work more successfully in six further schools having absorbed the messages of the evaluation of this first enterprise.     

Management Strategies for Complex Adaptive Systems Sensemaking,Learning, and Improvisation

Misspecification of the nature of organizations may be a major reason for difficulty in achieving performance improvement. Organizations are often viewed as machine‐like, but complexity science suggests that organizations should be viewed as complex adaptive systems. I identify the characteristics of complex adaptive systems and give examples of management errors that may be made when these characteristics are ignored. Command, control and planning are presented as managerial tasks that come to the fore when a machine view of organizations dominates thinking. When we treat organizations as complex adaptive systems the focus of managerial activity changes, and sensemaking, learning and improvisation become appropriate strategies for performance improvement. Each of these is defined and described. A modest research agenda is presented.     

A Shared Place of Discovery and Creativity: Practices of Contemporary Art and Design Pedagogy

This article is based on a project that explored the practices of art and design beginning teachers (BTs) working with learners in a post‐age‐16 context. The aim of the project was to: explore contemporary art and design practices; explore the concept of artist teacher learner researcher; enable beginning teachers to collaborate with post‐age‐16 pupils and develop new approaches and strategies to art and design pedagogy. Through practices that blurred learner‐teacher identities a dialectical pedagogy emerged and a collaborative community of practice developed, all enabled through a renegotiation and reconceptualising of places of learning. The beginning teachers also started to construct their artist teacher identities, understand what it means to practise as an artist teacher in the classroom, understand the impact of these practices on teaching and learning and develop new learning and teaching methods. This project demonstrates the possibilities of these practices for contemporary art and design pedagogy and also how these practices can endure and be sustainable for this community of beginning teachers in the current cultural, social and political contexts of education.     

Connecting the dots: Theorizing and mapping learning entanglement through archaeology and design

Designing for digitally enhanced learning has increased in complexity. In response, this paper calls for a reconceptualization of technology—as the reconfiguring of space, place, materials, time and social relations—enrolled and refashioned in emergent learning activity. Such reconceptualization requires analytical tools, methods and processes to map heterogeneous assemblages of people, tools and tasks. Educational researchers and designers are in need of approaches and theories that move beyond deterministic accounts about the utility of individual learning technologies, to connect theory, research and practice. Our research shows that in learning to distinguish between elements that are open to alteration through design and those that are not, educational designers gain deeper insights into the flows of matter, information and humans characteristic of productive networked learning environments. And this, in turn, gives rise to valued qualities of emergent learning activity in alignment with current theories about learning. In this paper, we present a series of methods adapted from archaeology and design, illustrating their power in tracing the complex webs of dependence characteristic of productive learning entanglement, with the aim of supporting future design for learning.     

Researchers and teachers learning together and from each other using video‐based multimodal analysis

This paper discusses a year‐long technology integration project during which teachers and researchers joined forces to explore children's collaborative activities through the use of touch screens. In the research project discussed in this paper, 16 touch screens were integrated into teaching and learning activities in two separate classrooms; the learning and collaborative processes were captured by using a video, collecting over 150 hours of footage. By using digital research technologies and a longitudinal design, the authors of the research project studied how teachers and children gradually integrated touch screens into their teaching and learning. This paper examines the methodological usefulness of video‐based multimodal analysis. Through reflection on the research project, we discuss how, by using video‐based multimodal analysis, researchers and teachers can study children's touch‐screen supported collaboration and how researchers and teachers can learn together.     

A two‐sided medal: On the complexity of international comparative and collaborative team research

In recent years, more and more international comparative research has been conducted in internationally and geographically spread project teams and international research networks, and comparative research has become a fundamentally collaborative effort. Accordingly, research in such projects has to cope with a higher level of methodological complexity than non‐comparative research as well as with a particular sociocultural complexity. This complexity can have an influence on the research process and therefore on the quality and validity of the results, an issue that has so far not been discussed much, either in Higher Education research or beyond. Thus, this article refers to studies that provide empirical insights into comparative collaborative research teams and illuminates why international collaboration in comparative research projects is both a source of better solutions and of amplified complications and how they are interrelated. On this basis it provides a conceptual reflection and delineates dimensions of task‐related, methodological complexity and team diversity. While comparative research has specific methodological challenges that can be alleviated by international team collaboration, collaborative research has particular social challenges that can be aggravated in comparative research. The conclusion makes propositions for further analyses, discusses lessons for comparative Higher Education research and sets out implications for its institutional development.     

坚持简单应对复杂 ——简易主义者马利克管理思想及其启示

管理学大师马利克是管理学界的奥卡姆剃刀:价值分明、立场坚定、语言犀利简练;马利克管理模型简单实用,操作容易.系统论、控制论和仿生学是其管理思想的认识论、方法论基础,坚持简单、应对复杂是其认识论和方法论特点.他研究、寻找和宣传破解复杂系统的管理规律,向读者呈现了一个简明、清晰的管理学世界.在学校管理从简单到复杂发展的过程中,要警惕学校管理的繁杂,成就教师有质量的生活,学校管理就必须回归简易:理念精简、制度易行、解放教师.     

Teaching Instructional Design: An Action Learning Approach

Many theorists and practitioners are calling for more authentically based teaching approaches in the preparation of instructional designers and performance technologists to address the complexity of the field's practice. Although many innovative methods have been incorporated into the study of instructional design and development and human performance technology, including case studies and applied experiences with collaborative groups, among others, the majority of teaching approaches are limited to the time constraints and format of the traditional university classroom setting. This paper discusses an alternative teaching approach that incorporates action learning principles along with authentic project‐based methods into the full‐time study of instructional design. The paper reviews action learning principles and highlights the commonalties between these principles and the application of the practice and teaching of the instructional design process in an authentic manner. Finally, the implementation of action learning principles within a graduate program in instructional technology is described. Action learning principles may be applied to many content areas; however, the highly complementary nature of this specific methodology to the teaching and practice of instructional design may have the potential to improve greatly our preparation of professionals in the complex work environments characteristic of this and related disciplines. As a valuable component of performance technology skills, training in instructional design methods based on an action learning approach may have broad implications for both the preparation of instructional designers and performance technologists.     

Research leadership in writing for publication: A theoretical framework

Academics experience difficulty in managing competing tasks, particularly in relation to writing for publication. In a study conducted on a writing retreat, analysis of data obtained from academic writers revealed that facilitative leadership provided at a writing retreat was central to managing task complexity and writing‐related anxiety. The question remains, however, about how this leadership can be modelled in campus settings in order to continue to support academics in managing the complexity of their multiple roles as teachers, researchers and writers, beyond purely technical‐rational approaches. This article outlines one approach to answering this question: it explains how containment theory was used to shed light on the leadership role at the writing retreat, and it proposes a model—strategic engagement—for the leadership role in writing for publication in campus settings.     

A framework for scaffolding students' assessment of the credibility of evidence

Assessing the credibility of evidence in complex, socio‐scientific problems is of paramount importance. However, there is little discussion in the science education literature on this topic and on how students can be supported in developing such skills. In this article, we describe an instructional design framework, which we call the Credibility Assessment Framework, to scaffold high school students' collaborative construction of evidence‐based decisions and their assessment of the credibility of evidence. The framework was employed for the design of a web‐based reflective inquiry environment on a socio‐scientific issue, and was enacted with 11th grade students. The article describes the components of the Credibility Assessment Framework and provides the details and results of an empirical study illustrating this framework in practice. The results are presented in the form of a case study of how 11th grade students investigated and evaluated scientific data relating to the cultivation of genetically modified plants. Multiple kinds of data were collected, including pre‐ and post‐tests of students' conceptual understanding and their skills in assessing the credibility of evidence, and videotapes of students' collaborative inquiry sessions. The analysis of the pre‐ and post‐tests on students' conceptual understanding of Biotechnology and their skills in assessing the credibility of evidence revealed statistically significant learning gains. Students' work in task‐related artifacts and the analysis of two groups' videotaped discussions showed that students became sensitive to credibility criteria, questioned the sources of data and correctly identified sources of low, moderate, and high credibility. Implications for designers and educators regarding the application of this framework are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 711–744, 2011     

复杂性理论在教育技术学中的研究分析与评述

复杂性理论改变了人们原有简单、线性思考问题的方式,将事物间的关系与内部的本质呈现了出来。教育技术学作为一门交叉学科迫切需要复杂性理论提供理论支持与方法支撑。通过梳理国内现有研究文献,对教育技术的设计、开发、利用、管理和评价五大领域中复杂性理论的研究现状进行分析与评述,发现在教育技术各个领域中都有复杂性理论的研究。在设计领域,复杂性适应系统、混沌理论以及复杂性思维被应用于教学设计中;在开发、利用与管理领域,研究大多基于复杂网络视角进行的研究;在评价领域,综合模糊评价法的应用较广。在分析复杂性理论在教育技术学中的现有成果的基础上,通过建立复杂性系统科学与教育技术新的研究关系,以促进复杂性理论在教育技术领域更深入的研究。     

The epistemic role of novel metaphors in teachers’ knowledge constructions of school reform

In this article, a parallel is drawn between Steven Hawking’s use of common and novel metaphors in his evolving explanation of the theory of the universe and the similar use of common and novel metaphors by educators in four school contexts attempting to illuminate their experiences of school reform storied and restoried over time. The epistemic role of novel metaphors is unpacked through examining the plotlines of the metaphors, the morals of the metaphors, the freedom of the metaphors and the teacher knowledge implications resident in the live metaphorical utterances. Through the use of self‐selected novel metaphors, both Hawking and the educators merged propositional and non‐propositional knowledge that was bound up in persons—and communicated across people—in deceptively simple, though infinitely complex, ways.     

Racism,Masculine Peer‐group Relations and the Schooling of African/ Caribbean Infant Boys

The past decade has witnessed the publication of a growing number of important ethnographic studies investigating the schooling experiences of Black students. Their focus has largely been upon student‐teacher relations during the students’ last few years of compulsory education. What they have highlighted is the complexity of racism and the varied nature of Black students’ experiences of schooling. By drawing upon data from a year‐long ethnographic study of an inner‐city, multi‐ethnic primary school, this paper aims to compliment these studies in two ways. Firstly the paper will broaden the focus to examine how student peer‐group relations play an integral role, within the context of student—teacher relations, in shaping many Black students’ schooling experiences. By focussing on African/ Caribbean infant boys, it will be shown how student—teacher relations on the one hand, and peer‐group relations on the other, form a continuous feed‐back loop; the products of each tending to exacerbate and inflate the other. Secondly, by concentrating on infant children, the paper will assess the extent to which these resultant social processes and practices are also evident for Black pupils at the beginning of their school careers—at the ages of five and six.