Technology and educational empowerment: Students' perspectives

As part of a two-year investigation of technological innovation in one secondary school, nine senior students participated in one-hour interviews that explored their perceptions of the proper role of technology in their schooling. Student responses were analyzed and compared to those of their teachers for similarities and differences in perceptions about desirable uses and goals for technology. Like their teachers, a majority preferred to adapt technology to support traditional, teacher-centered instruction. A minority valued technology as a facilitator of student-centered inquiry and appeared to differ from the majority in beliefs about schooling and in dispositional tolerances for uncertainty.This paper is based on work done as part of the author's doctoral dissertation at the University of Georgia. Portions of the paper were presented at the 9th Annual International Qualitative Research in Education Conference, Athens, GA, January, 1996.     

Observant participant: carnal sociology and researcher identity in religious educational spaces

The ethnographer’s embodied action during research is a complex of habit, belief, social and institutional positioning, and intention. This article examines what urban anthropologist Wacqaunt calls ‘carnal sociology’ and considers its implications for ethnographers of religious educational spaces. Contemporary ethnographers of education have renewed their interest in religious educational spaces—religious schools, houses of worship, public festivals. In conducting research in the field of religious education, ethnographers often cross familiar and unfamiliar boundaries, engaging in forms of participant observation and practice beyond their own religious categories: we research in religious spaces and with religious communities different from our own commitments. Drawing on interactional data from a multi-year ethnography of an urban Catholic school and parish in Philadelphia (USA), I consider how my own embodied participation in the religious rituals of the school and parish led to a reflexivity on practice, and initiated institutional and youth-driven social positioning in response.     

Critical Race Theory and Education: Racism and anti-racism in educational theory and praxis

What is Critical Race Theory (CRT) and what does it offer educational researchers and practitioners outside the US? This paper addresses these questions by examining the recent history of anti-racist research and policy in the UK. In particular, the paper argues that conventional forms of anti-racism have proven unable to keep pace with the development of increasingly racist and exclusionary education polices that operate beneath a veneer of professed tolerance and diversity. In particular, contemporary anti-racism lacks clear statements of principle and theory that risk reinventing the wheel with each new study; it is increasingly reduced to a meaningless slogan; and it risks appropriation within a reformist “can do” perspective dominated by the de-politicized and managerialist language of school effectiveness and improvement. In contrast, CRT offers a genuinely radical and coherent set of approaches that could revitalize critical research in education across a range of inquiries, not only in self-consciously “multicultural” studies. The paper reviews the developing terrain of CRT in education, identifying its key defining elements and the conceptual tools that characterize the work. CRT in education is a fast-changing and incomplete project but it can no longer be ignored by the academy beyond North America.     

Theory and praxis: reflections and lessons from a bilateral educational aid programme in Guinea-Bissau

This article examines Portuguese official aid (POA) in Guinea-Bissau, based on the experience of a bilateral educational aid Programme – PASEG (2000–2012). It explores the theory and praxis (understood as instructed action) of PASEG as a complex and transversal intervention in a context of fragility and political uncertainty. It discusses the transition from an aid programme which focused mainly on the individual dimension at the school level to an approach which tried to integrate the organisational dimension and capitalise on the enabling environment. Drawing attention to the idiosyncrasy of the political, historical, cultural and social aspects of Guinea-Bissau, the article highlights the tensions which arise in the attempt to reconcile the technical/academic dimensions of project implementation with the political agendas of POA.     

Understanding educational transfer: theoretical perspectives and conceptual frameworks

Educational transfer is an important and growing body of literature in the field of comparative education. Work from the last decade has focused on the stages of the borrowing cycle, and the context, causes and rationales for education borrowing. This recent work has contributed to earlier research on the role of multilateral organizations in education development and transfer. Rather than reviewing in comprehensive detail the substance, agents or mechanisms of educational transfer, this paper provides an overview of the field’s main theoretical lenses and conceptual frameworks, focusing on the stages, processes and forms of educational transfer. Throughout the paper we link related literature from disciplines other than education to account for education policy changes. The paper concludes with a discussion of future lines of research on educational transfer.

Weight versus gravitational force: Historical and educational perspectives

This paper discusses the existing dichotomy regarding the definition of weight and its implications in science education. The history and epistemology of the weight concept and its present status in instruction and students' knowledge about weight are reviewed. The rationale of the concept of gravitational weight, currently accepted in many textbooks, is critiqued. Two mutually related implications stem from this study in science teaching: a conceptual distinction between weight and gravitational force; and replacement of the gravitational definition of weight by the operational one. Both innovations may improve the quality of science education.     

Researching educational apps: ecologies,technologies, subjectivities and learning regimes

ABSTRACT

Apps are becoming increasingly important in education. However, critical educational research has hardly ever undertaken up-close analyses of educational apps. This article provides an extensive analysis of one ‘learning to code' app called Grasshopper. Drawing from the field of Science and Technology Studies, the article adopts a theoretical framework that situates app analyses at the dimensions of apps' situated ecologies, their platform and algorithmic technologies, the enacted user subjectivities and, as the sum of these previous dimensions, the projected learning regimes. Making use of the methodological entry points of app websites, stores and interfaces, the article makes visible and analyzes the app’s infrastructural settings, actively invokes different app situations, and uses these to advance the inquiry by offering a multidimensional point of view that navigates different scalar dimensions of educational apps. In doing so, the article examines learning to code through its concrete sociomaterial practices, and the specific pedagogies and sorts of education that are employed in order to bring about such learning.     

Torres strait islanders and Australian nationhood: Some educational perspectives

This article analyses the role of education in incorporating Australia's Melanesian minority, the Torres Strait Islanders, into the Australian nation. The analysis begins with the introduction of Queensland government schooling into Torres Strait in 1892, which fostered expectations of Queensland citizenship and employment opportunities available to other races in the economy of the Strait. From 1904 to the outbreak of world war II in the Pacific in 1942 these early directions were altered by educational policies which initially sought to train Islanders for a life in the Islands as a race apart from the rest of Australia. Subsequent syllabus reforms, paralleling but not equalling regular schooling offered in Queensland, did not meet Islanders' aspirations for proper schooling and the jobs they expected would flow from it. Following world war II, regulations confining Islanders to the Strait were relaxed and many migrated to the Queensland mainland in search of better jobs, better pay, and better education for their children. Those who remained in the Islands received an education which, by 1985, had been brought up to the mainland standard. Yet, neither group's educational aspirations were satisfied despite initiatives and financial incentives of the Commonwealth government aimed at keeping Islander children at school. The article concludes that the way ahead for Islanders in staking out their educational future in the Australian nation on a basis of equality with other Australians lies in educational developments in the Islands themselves, where Islanders are playing an active role in developing, managing, and guiding schooling in directions which recognise their identity and their citizenship aspirations.

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Zusammenfassung In diesem Artikel wird untersucht, inwieweit das Erziehungswesen die Integration der Bewohner der Torres-Inseln, der melanesischen Minderheit Australiens, in die australische Nation beeinflußt. Die Analyse befaßt sich zunächst mit der Einführung des Schulsystems auf die Torres-Inseln 1892 durch die Regierung von Queensland, wodurch Hoffnungen auf eine Staatsbürgerschaft von Queensland verstärkt wurden sowie auf Einstiegsmöglichkeiten in den Arbeitsmarkt, die denen der anderen Rassen der Inseln gleichwertig wären. Von 1904 bis zum Ausbruch des 2. Weltkrieges im Pazifik 1942 wurden diese frühen Ansätze durch eine Bildungspolitik geändert, die die Insulaner ursprünglich für ein Leben auf den Inseln als eine vom übrigen Australien abgetrennte Rasse vorbereiten sollte. Nachfolgende Reformen des Lehrplans, die parallel zu dem herkömmlichen, in Queensland praktizierten Schulwesen verliefen, aber nicht gleichwertig waren, hielten den Ansprüchen der Insulaner an eine ordentliche Schulbildung und den daraus abgeleiteten Hoffnungen auf bessere Arbeitsstellen nicht stand. Nach dem 2. Weltkrieg wurden Bestimmungen, die eine Abwanderung der Insulaner von den Inseln untersagten, gelockert and viele zogen auf der Suche nach besseren Arbeitsplätzen, höheren Löhnen und qualifizierterer Ausbildung für ihre Kinder nach Queensland. Den auf den Inseln Verbliebenen stellte man ein Schulsystem zur Verfügung, das bis 1985 dem Niveau des Festlandes angeglichen wurde. Die Erwartungen beider Gruppen bezüglich des Bildungswesens wurden jedoch trotzdem nicht erfüllt, obwohl die Commonwealth-Regierung Initiativen und finanzielle Anreize bot, um die Kinder der Bewohner in der Schule zu halten. Fazit dieses Artikels: Der Schlüssel der Insulaner zu einer mit der Ausbildung anderer Australier gleichzusetzenden erzieherischen Zukunft liegt in der Entwicklung des Schulwesens auf den Inseln selbst, wobei die Insulaner bei Entwicklung, Verwaltung und Leitung des Schulwesens bis hin zu einer Anerkennung ihrer Identität und ihres Strebens nach Staatsbürgerschaft aktiv mitwirken sollten.

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Résumé Le présent article analyse le rôle de l'éducation dans l'insertion de la minorité mélanésienne, les insulaires du Détroit de Torrès, dans la nation australienne. L'analyse commence par l'introduction du système scolaire de l'Etat du Queensland dans le Détroit de Torrès en 1892, qui a encouragé les attentes de citoyenneté du Queensland et les possibilités d'emploi offertes aux autres races dans l'économie du Détroit. De 1904 à 1942, début de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale dans le Pacifique, ces premières orientations ont fait place à des politiques éducatives qui cherchaient au départ à former les insulaires à la vie dans les îles, en tant que race à part du reste du pays. Les réformes éducatives qui suivirent, parallèles mais non égales au système éducatif régulier en vigueur dans le Queensland, n'ont pas satisfait les aspirations des insulaires à une véitable éducation et aux métiers qui'ils pensaient obtenier grâce à celle-ci. Après la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, les lois confinant les insulaires au Détroit de Torrès ont été mitigées et beaucoup émigrèrent sur le continent, dans le Queensland, en quête d'un meilleur emploi, d'un meilleur salaire et d'une meilleure éducation pour leurs enfants. Ceux étant restés dans les îles reçurent une éducation dont le niveau équivalait, en 1985, à celui exigé sur le continent. Toutefois, les aspirations éducatives des groupes n'ont pas été satisfaites malgré les initiatives et les incitations financières du gouvernement du Commonwealth visant à encourager les enfants des îles à rester à l'école. Cet article conclut que le moyen pour les insulaires de définir leur avenir éducatif au sein de la nation australienne, au même titre que les autres Australiens, réside dans la promotion de l'éducation dans les îles elles-mêmes, où les insulaires jouent un rôle actif dans le développement, l'administration et l'orientation de l'instruction dans des directions traduisant leur identité et leurs aspirations en matière de citoyenneté.

     

Foundations of educational technology: integrative approaches and interdisciplinary perspectives

Abstracts

English: This study examined the effectiveness and efficiency of a three‐dimensional virtual reality simulation model designed to train kindergarten teachers in the understanding of kindergarten children's needs and perceptions. Statistical analysis of the data indicates that the kindergarten teachers who were trained through the virtual reality technology were significantly more understanding of children's needs and perceptions than those trained through the workshop method. Thus, in light of the results of the study, it is suggested that teacher trainers should favourably consider using virtual reality simulation models in the training of kindergarten teachers in order to maximize the effectiveness of the teacher‐training process.     

Researching primary engineering education: UK perspectives,an exploratory study

This paper draws attention to the findings of an exploratory study that critically identified and analysed relevant perceptions of elementary level engineering education within the UK. Utilising an approach based upon grounded theory methodology, 30 participants including teachers, representatives of government bodies and non-profit providers of primary level engineering initiatives were interviewed. Three main concepts were identified during the analysis of findings, each relevant to primary engineering education. These were pedagogic issues, exposure to engineering within the curriculum and children's interest. The paper concludes that the opportunity to make a real difference to children's education by stimulating their engineering imagination suggests this subject area is of particular value.