The contribution (or not) of UN higher education to peacebuilding: an ethnographic account

This paper examines the role of United Nations (UN) peace academics in teaching for peace within the UN higher education system, and questions what contribution, if any, UN peacebuilding education makes to the broader field of peace and conflict studies education, and in the lives of the people it touches. The study draws on ethnographic data collected over a six-month period at one UN university in 2015. The data collection period involved participant observation, interviews with faculty and postgraduate students, document analysis, and surveys with learners. Findings suggest tensions and contradiction in the university around issues of UN mimicry, Western-centrism, state domination, and institutional capitalism. Implications are briefly addressed and recommendations provided.     

教育科学研究中的"离我远去"——教育人种志及其在教育科学研究中的方法论意义

教育人种志主张在广泛考察文化因素对教育实践的影响的基础上,遵循“离我远去”的原则,“从书斋走向田野”,进入真实的教育情境实施研究。在教育科学研究脱离教育实践、远离教育场域的今天,教育人种志研究范式在教育科学研究中具有重要的方法论意义。     

论STS的两种研究传统

美国的STS和英国的SSK是STS的两种研究传统。美国的STS突破了过去研究科学技术较少联系社会的状况,从关注现实问题出发而展开的探索活动。英国的STS（主要是SSK）发展出了一种把科学技术置于社会情景中的生动分析,形成了研究科学技术的新的理论视野——建构主义视野。文章从两种研究传统的不同的社会背景、学术条件、理论内容和价值与趋势四方面对两种研究传统进行了比较和论述,以对这两种研究传统有一个清晰的认识。     

The Promissory Future(s) of Education: Rethinking scientific literacy in the era of biocapitalism

This article investigates the biopolitical dimensions that have grown out of the union between biocapitalism and current science education reform in the US. Drawing on science and technology study theorists, I utilize the analytics of promissory valuation and salvationary discourses to understand how scientific literacy in the neo‐Sputnik era has deeply involved educational life in biocapitalist circuits of exchange and production. I lay out this emerging terrain of ‘futuricity’ through a biopolitical analysis of the National Academies highly influential policy recommendation on science education, Rising Above the Gathering Storm as well as the Association of American Universities' National Defense Education and Innovation Initiative. Here it is argued that the educational subject usually seen as a site of human capital investment can better be understood as a ‘biovalue’ in at least two senses: the educational subject's body as a site of investment and as an extractable source of value directly related to the larger globally competitive regime of the rapidly growing bioeconomy. I conclude my analysis of the vital politics at play in the biocapitalist articulation of science education with an alternative model of scientific literacy that is based in what I call biodemocratic practices. I explore such a rereading of scientific literacy through the example of the GrowHaus—a sustainable urban farm situated in a marginalized community in a major US city. The GrowHaus offers a model of scientific literacy that rejects extractive ethics associated with biocapitalist production and instead promotes a sustainable and socially just practice of science.     

(Re)Presenting the subject: a critical reflection on the use of ethnographic documentary video with students of colour in K-12 urban school settings

ABSTRACT

This paper illustrates how ethnographic video was used as part of a diversity education project at a public urban middle school in Los Angeles, California in the United States. The goal of this article is twofold: first, it is to describe one way in which ethnographic video can be used as a pedagogical tool in primary and secondary school settings. Second, it is to provide an experimental example of an evaluative audience reception study. The article describes the genesis of this project, explicates the intentionality of using an affective theoretical framework to interpret the project, and finally presents an evaluative audience reception study of the video in order to realise fulfilment of that goal. The results show that through this ethnographic video project, viewers were able to enter into a change space of relation, position themselves in the world, and recognise their own contextualised privilege.     

Idiosyncratic cases and hopes for general validity: what education research might learn from ecology / Casos idiosincrásicos y expectativas de validez general: lo que la investigación en educación puede aprender de la ecología

Abstract

We reflect on our ongoing struggles with rigour and validity in a project based on case study analyses: How can particular instances of learning, with all their idiosyncratic details and dynamics, contribute findings of lasting value to education? For this essay, we look to the field of ecology, which has faced similar challenges, for insights into the goals and methods of research.     

科学知识社会学视野中的科学教育观

科学知识社会学是在解构传统科学基础上产生的。它提出以强纲领摧毁科学知识的客观性，以信念研究张扬科学知识的社会性，以实验室研究揭示科学知识的境域性。科学知识社会学观照下的科学教育坚持如下基本理念：否定知识的客观性和普遍性，张扬相对的科学知识观；重视全面的科学素养，追求多元的目的观；贯通科学与社会，倡导综合的课程观；摒弃简单的知识灌输，坚持建构与对话的教学观。     

Beyond records and representations: inbetween writing in educational ethnography

Ethnographers are particularly interested in writing. They have paid particular attention to the practices of making field notes and to the ways in which their public texts represent those that they have encountered and studied. To date there has been less attention paid to the kinds of writing that used to make sense of experiences in the field. We call this inbetween writing. By examining our own processes of inbetween writing, and drawing on the work of James Clifford, we have produced a nine-part heuristic of inbetween writing. We argue that the heuristic could be used in research methods education to highlight the importance of writing to ethnographic sense-making and knowledge production.     

学校场域中的"规则"打造--一种社会学视角

在对教育生活实践的关注中 ,人们常常会忽略一些重要的教育现象 ,这些现象看似与教学本身有所游离 ,但实则却关系密切。甚至 ,对这些教育现象的关注 ,可能导致对某些教育理念与教育行为的颠覆。文章以其独特的社会学视角 ,试图关注与阐释的是 ,学生在开始置于学校场域的“此时此刻”,场域以及场域中的人如何借助分班技术、学号编码、仪式活动以及办公室与教室的双重领域打造入“场”规则 ,并且在这种打造中如何制造出诸多弱势群体的问题     

Beyond the ‘two cultures’ in the teaching of disaster: or how disaster education and science education could benefit each other

Abstract

Looking at the current discourse on how to teach disaster, one apparent gap is that the scientific aspect of disaster is discussed and taught mostly in isolation from its human aspect. Disaster educators seem to be primarily interested in addressing issues such as social vulnerability, community resilience, personal action-related knowledge and emotion rather than the scientific basis of disasters, whereas science educators often fail to make connections between the scientific accounts of disasters and the social and political contexts that surround them. In this theoretical paper, I claim that this disconnect is problematic and that overcoming it is a key to understanding and teaching disaster in a more nuanced and comprehensive manner. Drawing primarily on science and technology studies (STS) on disaster, I explore the potential of interpreting disasters as failures of socio-technical systems, which helps us unearth the inner workings of the complex network of science, technology and society in the wake of calamities. STS challenges the dichotomous understanding of the material and social worlds and takes a view that they shape each other to constitute socio-technical systems. Taking such an approach to disaster allows a synthetic understanding of the natural, technological and human-made disasters that we are faced with in the age of uncertainty and complexity. Based on the ideas of STS and examples of recent disasters in East Asian countries, I argue that disaster education and science education can cross-pollinate in tackling the post-disaster hardship and cultivating responsible citizens.     

Ethnographies across virtual and physical spaces: a reflexive commentary on a live Canadian/UK ethnography of distributed medical education

This article draws on an ongoing ethnography of distributed medical education (DME) provision in Canada in order to explore the methodological choices of the researchers as well as the wider pluralisation of ethnographic frameworks that is reflected within current research literature. The article begins with a consideration of the technologically mediated ways in which the researchers do their work, a way of work that is paralleled within the DME curriculum that forms the focus of the ethnography. The article goes on to problematise relationships amongst the researchers and between the researchers and the field of research, and to consider the ways in which methodological choices are mediated. In so doing, the article proposes an acceptance of methodological pluralism that is tempered by the need to acknowledge the sometimes-slight differences that distinguish ethnographic paradigms.     

介于科学和哲学之间的科学哲学--基于对波普尔和费耶阿本德的思想比较

波普尔与费耶阿本德均是科学哲学的代表人物,但经过哲学社会学的考察发现,这两位学者均不是专业的科学家。波普尔在讨论科学划界时所关注的“科学”更接近于人文社会科学,他所坚持的“猜想与反驳”的严格演绎逻辑其实是“普遍怀疑”的变种,因此他更多是从哲学的角度来看待科学。波普尔的严格证伪主义是缺乏内容和历史性的,费耶阿本德则把波普尔的这种逻辑推向极致,得出了怎么都行的方法论。通过梳理发现,两者所持有的社会态度和政治立场对他们的思想都产生了根本性的影响。通过对两者思想的比较,可以发现科学哲学中所存在的科学倾向和哲学倾向,这种结论迫使科学哲学重新反思自身的适用范围、目的和意义。     

Whatever happened to STS? Pre-service physics teachers and the history of quantum mechanics

If issues in the history and philosophy of science and those related to science, technology and society are generally accepted in policy, how ought these be handled in practice? Mandate in policy does not guarantee implementation in practice. Indeed, HPS and STS have for decades been marginalized in the curriculum. Subject areas designated to teach components of HPS and STS, such as design and technology, social studies and science, seem preoccupied with other aspects of the curriculum and rarely get around to HPS and STS. This study aimed at eliciting pre-service physics teachers’ perspectives on using HPS to address quantum mechanics and scientific literacy. Through questionnaires, observation of and participation in a physics methods class, 16 pre-service teachers were asked to identify topics they considered problematic to teach or learn. They were challenged to identify those topics that could effectively be taught or learned from HPS. The pre-service teachers agreed that HPS and STS were more appealing for teaching some topics, such as quantum mechanics, which is the focus of this article. This intervention in physics teacher education demonstrates the importance of using specific methods in physics instruction to demonstrate the value of HPS in scientific literacy.     

与时俱进,实现物理化学教学的创新

物理化学教学应常教常新、常教常精，经典原理的新阐述，传统内容与科技前沿相结合，重视方法论的教学。     

HPS教育及对我国科学教育改革的启示

HPS教育是近年来在西方比较有影响的一种科学教育观。HPS教育理论、HPS课．程以及HPS课程的实施对我国当前的科学教育改革都具有一定的借鉴意义。     

I.D.ology and the technologies of public (school) space: an ethnographic inquiry into the neo-liberal tactics of social (re)production

This paper presents findings from a qualitative UK study exploring the social practices of schoolchildren visiting an interactive science discovery centre. It is promoted as a place for ‘learning through doing’, but the multi-modal, ethnographic methods adopted suggest that children were primarily engaged in (1) sensory pleasure-taking and (2) playing out shifting relations of affect and sociality. In discussing this, the paper does not ask what children are learning, but rather what they are doing – and how this does or does not relate to the scientific principles presented to them. The paper confirms studies suggesting that discovery centres are highly social spaces in which cognitive processing is only one aspect but goes further in suggesting that the twin dimensions of the social and the sensory are so paramount in governing children's responses to exhibits as to eclipse thoughts of science. The findings suggest that old-style live demonstrations are more effective than technologically interactive exhibits in foregrounding scientific concepts.     

Age is more than just a number! The role of age and maturity in the processes leading to early school leaving in Flanders (Belgium)

In many educational systems, age is used as a criterion to organise education. Children's age is used to group students together and indicate entry into particular programmes. The use of age for organisational purposes in education stems from the idea that age provides an indication of the development of children, which is associated with teaching and learning. However, more far‐reaching consequences of age‐related educational practices are insufficiently recognised in policy and academic research. Qualitative methods are used to study students and school personnel in diverse types of educational institutions in Flanders (Belgium) to assess how age and age‐related issues matter for the students’ educational trajectories and educational decision‐making processes leading to early school leaving. Data analyses reveal that school staff members consider age and perceived maturity during evaluation procedures. Students also consider age during educational decision‐making processes: when getting older or being too old for the grade, students increasingly weigh the costs and benefits associated with getting an educational qualification and being enrolled in school and alternative opportunities. Students’ expectations related to age shape their school experiences and feelings of belonging. The findings of this study demonstrate how these educational practices add to the reproduction of inequalities through education. These results could inform debates concerning the evaluation procedures in secondary education, compulsory education and the reduction of early school leaving in Europe.     

Environmental and sustainability education in a post-truth era. An exploration of epistemology and didactics beyond the objectivism-relativism dualism

This article focuses on environmental and sustainability education (ESE) in the context of the topical post-truth debate. It aims to progress theoretical research as well as empirical investigations on how ESE practices can avoid the pitfalls involved in an objectivist as well as a relativist approach to teaching and learning. After elaborating the problems implied in both these approaches, the article explores concepts developed in science and technology studies (STS) that have the potential to inspire ESE research and practice to move beyond this problematic dichotomy: Latour’s ‘matters of concern’ and ‘compositionism’ and Jasanoff’s ‘co-production’ and ‘socio-technical imaginaries’. Drawing on pragmatist educational theory the author develops a conceptual framework that serves as a theoretical model for investigations of how ESE subject matter and teaching methods can be introduced, handled and experienced in a way that moves beyond the dualism of objectivism versus relativism. Building on the work of scholars who have connected Dewey’s pragmatic, transactional perspective to the domain of didactical research, it is shown how this theoretical model can be operationalised for empirical studies with the help of well-chosen analytical methods. The article is concluded with some reflections on the limitations and potential of the presented framework.     

工作知识:职业教育课程的“新鲜血液”

学校形态的职业教育是近代化的产物,伴随着工业革命对古代学徒制的瓦解而形成.它同时也是制度化教育时代的要求,效率是其追求的目标.而这种制度化了的学校形态的职业教育"在瓦解学习过程与工作过程同一性的同时,也瓦解了学徒与师傅的亲密关系;在给学生提供大量标准化知识的同时,也使学生在远离工作情境的学校情境中难以建构知识的职业意义".最直接的表现就是职业教育课程的学问化.职业教育要走出误区,开展真正富有成效的工作本位的课程就需要深入理解工作知识的内涵.对工作知识内涵的深入解读,将有助于我们深刻理解职业教育课程的走向.