Following One's Nose in Reading W. G. Sebald Allegorically: Currere and Invisible Subjects

In education, we are concerned with the teaching and learning of subjects, but the word “subject” can refer to the discipline being studied as well as the individual who is studying. In this essay, Teresa Strong‐Wilson explores this “double entendre” (which William Pinar refers to as the “double consciousness”) of curriculum studies through the analogy afforded by German author‐in‐exile W. G. Sebald's working through of difficult subjects by way of semi‐autobiographical writing that takes the form of an “invisible subject”: a preoccupation with an unnamed injustice entangled with his own upbringing. Curriculum theory, as currere, has foregrounded the autobiographical. While the place of autobiography in curriculum studies has often been taken to mean writing (especially of a confessional sort), currere is more an allegorical method of study, of intellectual engagement, of learning through reading and writing, and of teaching so as to open spaces for agency. Strong‐Wilson suggests that Sebald can provide a strong example for us in curriculum studies of how to ethically bring into being an allegorical, autobiographical practice focused on “invisible” subjects of deep concern.     

Uncomfortable pedagogy: experiential learning as an anthropological encounter in the Asia-Pacific

This paper features a discussion of how educators can channel anthropological practices towards the enhancement of experiential learning (EL) teaching methods, particularly on the topic of religion across the Asia-Pacific. I argue that our capacity to achieve curricular objectives through EL calls for an attentiveness to the affinity between the empirical challenges confronted by ethnographers, who work to create rapport between researcher and subject, and classroom teachers who seek to cultivate a conducive learning environment beyond the classroom walls. I show the pedagogical implications of the ways anthropologists have operationalized their discipline’s “critical turn” by highlighting two experiential domains: (1) through activities of “uncomfortable” stereotype self-inventory and (2) through a dialogic pedagogy that pursues meaningful learning outcomes through the “struggle” to recognize inter-cultural and religious agency among students.     

Ideology and Morality in Host Language Learning: American Protestants in the Former Yugoslavia

ABSTRACT

American Protestants serving overseas must learn their host communities’ “heart” language from the twin moral imperative to minimize their burden on host partners and to embody their faith through their language practice. Language learning thus has moral consequences; not merely proficiency attainment, but faithfulness and calling are at stake. The author, a Protestant himself, conducted an ethnography of Americans serving in a Protestant organization at field sites in Bosnia and Slovenia. Two ideologies emerged from this study and were analyzed as a polycentric system exerting moral authority. These were (a) a dogmatic ideology of using the “right” language, the “national” or “heart language” corresponding to a people group, and (b) a pragmatic ideology of using “whatever” linguistic resources available to convey their gospel. These ideologies overlapped and shifted over time, with consequences for fieldworkers’ longevity, the linguistic ecology of host communities, and Christian understandings of language learning.     

Reframing Resources in Engineering Teaching and Learning

Abstract

The notion of “resources” is often framed in an economic sense: money, time, equipment and the like. The authors reconceptualise this notion, situating resources as embedded in curricular frameworks, teacher practice and student experience. This leads them to define resources as “the potential to participate in socio-cultural action” which is illustrated in this article through a series of reflections on the part of the authors, all within the context of engineering education. First, they demonstrate that curriculum can be productively thought of as a route marker for the development of resources that students need in order to enact their role as professional engineers. Thereafter, they show that lecturers bring tacit resources of trust, care, creativity and credibility to the teaching and learning space, and that these are necessary to overcome the inertia that often resists the transformation of teaching and learning practice. Finally, they reflect on how students’ prior learning experiences can be harnessed as a resource for teaching and learning. In so doing, they present resources as tied to sociocultural practices and personal and institutional histories, and encourage others to take up these ideas so as to consider how resources, viewed in the authors’ sense, are valued within (engineering) education.     

The Procedurally Directive Approach to Teaching Controversial Issues

Recent articles on teaching controversial topics in schools have employed Michael Hand's distinction between “directive teaching,” in which teachers attempt to persuade students of correct positions on topics that are not rationally controversial, and “nondirective teaching,” in which teachers avoid persuading students on topics that are rationally controversial. However, the four methods of directive teaching discussed in the literature — explicit directive teaching, “steering,” “soft‐directive teaching,” and “school ethos endorsement” — make rational persuasion problematic, if not self‐defeating. In this essay, Maughn Rollins Gregory argues that “procedurally directive teaching” offers an alternative to such approaches because it derives from the intention to guide inquiry rather than to persuade. He demonstrates that the conceptual frameworks of perfectionism and antiperfectionism, which have been proposed for directive teaching on same‐sex marriage, can instead be used to generate open questions for student inquiry, as can a third, civil rights framework. Given these considerations, Gregory maintains that pedagogical guidance on this topic should be procedurally directive rather than substantively directive. Further, the fact that legal, political, and ethics scholars disagree about which framework is more appropriate to the issue of same‐sex marriage indicates that such arguments cannot be dispositive of the pedagogical issue of how to frame classroom discussions about it. Rather, students should inquire into this meta‐level framing dispute for themselves.     

Improving student learning in distance education: Theory,research and practice

The aim of this paper is to examine how project-based learning in distance education can be seen to make a distinctive contribution to “improving student learning”. How has this approach to course design and assessment been put into practice in an Open University (OU) course and what assumptions about teaching and learning are involved in this course development process. The paper also looks briefly at how this project component has been evaluated by describing students’ and tutors’ experiences of learning and teaching in the form of “action research” so to reflect critically on practice and so initiate change.     

Speculations on qualities of difficult knowledge in teaching and learning: an experiment in psychoanalytic research

This paper explores two questions in relation to the authors' project, “Difficult Knowledge in Teaching and Learning: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry.” They describe how their original question, “What makes knowledge difficult?,” transformed into “What is it to represent ‘difficult’ knowledge?” They speculate on the resonances that this crisis of representation leaves in narration by way of three psychoanalytic concepts: deferred action, transference, and symbolization. They consider constructions of difficulties in teaching and learning from the vantage of psychoanalytic writing and their own attempts to interview university teachers and students on how they think about difficult knowledge. They offer a conceptual archeology of their project that highlights the shift from the first to the second research question, some clinical discussion on the difficulties of narrating teaching and learning, some constructions of difficulty proposed in their research protocol, and constructions of difficulty in their interviews. They conclude by discussing how the very design of their research enacted the crisis of representing teaching and learning.     

The “Datafication” of Teaching: Can Teachers Speak Back to the Numbers?

Teachers face considerable and increasing pressure in their working lives. Labor intensification compels teachers to work faster, harder, and longer. However, teachers also experience increasing external control over what they teach and how they teach. These processes are increasingly made possible by the “datafication” of teaching, whereby the educational process is increasingly transformed into numbers that allow measurement, comparison, and the functioning of high-stakes accountability systems linked to rewards and sanctions. Although there is no question that being able to use student assessment data to support learning has an important place in teachers' repertoire of skills, “datafication” refers to the use of data in a way that has become increasingly detached from supporting learning and is much more concerned with the management of teacher performance as an end in itself. This article presents two currents of critical thought in relation to teachers' work, labor process theory and poststructural analyses grounded in the concept of performativity, and discusses them as a way of “making sense” of teachers' work and the “datafication” of teaching, with a particular focus on questions of control and resistance.

?It seeks to understand why, despite the pressures on teachers, teacher resistance has seldom developed in ways, at times, or on a scale that both experience and theoretical insight might have predicted. There are clearly significant differences between the two perspectives presented in this article, not least in the ways they conceptualize and explain “resistance.” However, common ground is identifiable and the two theoretical approaches can be bridged in a form that can be productive for those seeking to “speak back to the numbers.” In looking to broker this theoretical divide, I argue that frame theory, rooted within the sociology of social movements, can offer a fruitful way of theory bridging, while also providing the basis for a wider politics of transformation. The article offers several examples of grassroots initiatives formed to oppose standardized testing in England that provide practical examples of this “ideas work” in action.     

深度教学视角下高校“中国文化”英语课程思政落实研究

以高校“中国文化”英语课程为例,从深度学习课堂进程维度入手,将思想政治教育深度融入教学,以期解决课程思政“怎样做”的问题。具体措施如下:第一,明确高校“中国文化”英语课程思政的目标;第二,梳理课程蕴含的思想政治元素和价值导向;第三,采用展示高挑战项目、深入讨论问题、关联知识体系等教学方式来“落小,落细,落实”课程思政。这既能提高学生英语综合能力和高阶思维能力,全面提升学生文化自信,也能将育人有机融入教学实践,连通课程思政“最后一公里”。     

从“学习”到“问学”:中国教育理性的文化回归之契机

教育理性意指思考教育的特定思维方式,不同国家和历史时期的教育文化、形态和制度对应着不同的显性教育理性。通过梳理21世纪西方现代教育理性从“学习”到“问学”(study)的转变,从中可以看出,中国的传统文化哲学可为正在全球兴起的“问学”理性的建构提供丰富的理性文化基础和空间。换而言之,西方当下的“问学”教育理性转向实则为中国教育理性的文化回归提供了一个历史性的契机。     

Inside the Black Box: On the Concepts “Teaching” and “Learning” and the Connections Between Them

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I discuss the concepts “teaching” and “learning” and investigate the connections between them. Starting from the perspective on teaching and learning expressed in The European Qualifications Framework (EQF), I analyse three theses on the concept of teaching: the Dewey-thesis, the Standard-thesis and the Hirst-thesis, identifying problems in the established definitions. Following Hirst, I contend that teaching is an intention, hence a potential, having learning as its possible realization. That the learning is only possible is the papers main argument, since it explains how and why (the quality of) input is vitally important in educational settings. This idea is in direct opposition to the view in the EQF. In consequence, I argue that the connection between teaching and learning is teleological as opposed to mechanical. By way of contrast, I distinguish my understanding from Ryle-like analyses of teaching as task and learning as achievement, and argue that on a teleological understanding, teaching might be considered an achievement in its own right.     

REA Presidential Address: Spaces of Inter-cultural Provocation for Religious Formation

In this essay, I reflect on the challenges faced by professors teaching Jewish studies in a Catholic university system. The essay records my experiences teaching two courses, “Judaism and the Holocaust” and “American Judaism: Thought and Culture,” at Santa Clara University as an adjunct lecturer during the academic year 1994‐95. The essay touches on broader questions concerning “the dialectics of difference” that inform cross‐cultural education and exchange. Teach‐ ing Jewish studies in any Gentile space (Catholic, Protestant, or secular) entails a constructive tension between trust and suspicion, candor and reserve.     

An examination of the roles of the teacher and students during a problem-based learning intervention: lessons learned from a study in a Taiwanese primary mathematics classroom

The benefits of problem-based learning (PBL) to student learning have prompted researchers to investigate this pedagogical approach over the past few decades. However, little research has examined how PBL can be applied to mathematics learning and teaching, especially in countries like Taiwan, where the majority of teachers are accustomed to lecture methods and students are used to this style of teaching. This study examines the actions of a teacher and her class of 35 fifth-grade students (10–11-year-olds) as they tried to take on and respond to the demands of their new roles as “facilitator” and “constructors”, respectively, during a one-year PBL intervention in a Taiwanese mathematics classroom. Our findings provide insights into classroom participants’ role transition, from a customary role to a new role, when engaging with PBL. We identify an interrelationship between the teacher and student roles and discuss implications for the implementation of PBL at the primary education level.     

新时代何以育智：作为一种方法的“学习对质”

“对质”一词来源于法学学科,但巧妙地回答了教育科学中对学生“要我学”至“我要学”转变后关于“我该如何学”的持续追问。“学习对质”是深化学生思考的重要方法,能够达成学生以思考为核心目的之学习,可回应新时代育智问题,助力新时代学生学习。通过系统阐述“学习对质”的概念、内容、形式和结果,可进一步厘清“学习对质”的独特内涵。而梳理当前学习理论和实践变革发展需要,可肯定“学习对质”作为学习方法存在的意义。此外,要实现“学习对质”,应发挥教师“学习对质”的引导作用和发展学生的“学习对质”精神、能力,使学生在教师的引导下更好地掌握学习方法,有效开展“学习对质”,“解构”并“重构”广义知识,积极扩展思维界限,不断提升终身学习能力,不断实现自我发展、自我成就、自我超越。     

“双一流”背景下公共实验平台建设与实践

公共实验平台是高校科研和教学的重要支撑。如何在“双一流”建设的机遇下,以把握学科建设内涵为导向,深化资源配置综合改革,高效发挥平台的服务保障作用、使之成为支撑学科发展、人才引进、科学研究、人才培养及社会服务窗口,是平台建设面临的普遍问题。结合学校公共实验平台的规划建设和管理运行,探索公共实验平台与学科建设、人才培养的最优协同方式,为“双一流”大学的建设与发展提供参考。     

Learning about “Half”: Critical Aspects and Pedagogical Strategies in Designed Preschool Activities

This is an empirical inquiry concerning children’s concept development and early mathematics teaching. The intention is to broaden the understanding of preschool children’s perceptions of the concept “half” (as 1 of 2 equal parts of a whole), in designed mathematics teaching settings. Three teachers working with 4–5-year-old children participate in an in-service program, involving continuous and cooperative reflection and theoretically designed teaching activities. Observations of pedagogical strategies and children’s responses reveal that: children show qualitatively different ways of experiencing the same concept; the ways of experiencing are critical for how the intended learning object is perceived; and the dimensions of the learning object are related to each other, suggesting a hierarchical organization of how to perceive aspects of “half.”     

USING COMPUTER CONFERENCING IN TEACHING

For 3years, I have been teaching neuroscience courses by using computer conferencing to complement the traditional lectures. Typically, the conferencing involved local, on‐campus students, although one semester the class was combined from on‐campus and off‐campus students. For most of my 33‐year teaching career, I had used the teaching approach that most professors use, which is what educational theorists call “instructivist.” Critics call that “stand and deliver.” Lecturing is an efficient way to dispense organized information, but it does not ensure learning nor is it very effective in showing students how to learn on their own.

Instructivism can be enriched by complementing it with “constructivist” approaches. Constructivists argue that there is a direct relationship between the amount of learning that occurs and the extent to which the environment provides a rich source of engaging experiences in which students construct their own knowledge and understanding. I have found that such an environment is readily provided by computer conferencing.

In my teaching of neuroscience, I have used a network software system (FORUM) for small student groups to conduct a variety of constructivist learning activities. Within weekly deadlines, students worked in groups at their own pace and time of convenience. My impression of the advantages of such conferencing for constructivist activities include the promotion of socialization in “cyberspace,” providing an environment for team learning, the reduction of social problems in face‐to‐face instruction, increased teaching and learning efficiency, more comprehensive means for assessing student learning, and improved quality of student work.     

THE GOVERNMENTALIZATION OF LEARNING AND THE ASSEMBLAGE OF A LEARNING APPARATUS

Abstract In this essay, Maarten Simons and Jan Masschelein reconsider the concepts “educationalization” and “the grammar of schooling” in the light of the overwhelming importance of “learning” today. Doubting whether these concepts and related historical‐analytical perspectives are still useful, the authors suggest the concept “learning apparatus” as a point of departure for an analysis of the “grammar of learning.” They draw on Michel Foucault’s analysis of governmentality to describe how learning has become a matter of both government and self‐government. In describing the governmentalization of learning and the current assemblage of a ”learning apparatus,” Simons and Masschelein indicate how the concept of learning has become disconnected from education and teaching and has instead come to refer to a kind of capital, to something for which the learner is personally responsible, to something that can and should be managed, and to something that must be employable. Finally, the authors elaborate how these discourses combine to play a crucial role in contemporary advanced liberalism that seeks to promote entrepreneurship.     

UbD模式在初中生物教学中的实践研究

2018年1月宜昌市正式出台新中考政策,传统的依据考纲确定教学内容结合学生单纯机械记忆的教和学方式已经不再适用。UbD模式中创造的“逆向教学设计法”使教学致力于发掘大概念,帮助学生获得持久、可迁移的理解,为新中考背景下落实学科核心素养提供了一种新的思路。通过“探究非生物因素对金鱼的影响”实践,进行逆向教学设计,对教学实践结果进行分析,重点阐述了初中生物课堂可以采取一种新的可实行的教学模式。