The critical policy discourse analysis frame: helping doctoral students engage with the educational policy analysis

This paper addresses an issue of increasing significance in the context of taught educational doctorates and argues that this may have wider applicability for doctoral students across a range of social science disciplines. It identifies the need to engage with policy analysis as a key element of such programmes and attempts to address students' concerns over a lack of practical approaches to do so by offering an analytical framework drawing on critical discourse analysis. This paper highlights the affordances of a taught doctorate context to consider the potential for more collaborative community approaches to doctoral pedagogies through reflecting upon the way the frame was introduced and used by one group of EdD students. In doing so, this paper offers both a practical analytical tool for doctoral students but also a pedagogical approach grounded in an invitation to dialogue and induction into the academic discourse community, through a notion of critical inclusion.     

Should religious studies be part of the compulsory state school curriculum?

This article argues that of the various approaches taken in state education internationally, the inclusion of a discrete academic subject dealing with religious traditions and spiritual or secular alternatives is the most effective way of addressing religious plurality in education. It examines the increasing presence of religion in public discourse, various educational responses to this, and argues that a separate subject, taught by specialist teachers, is the most likely to achieve the aim of the United Nations for mutual understanding and peace between diverse religious and cultural traditions.     

Why Theology Can and Should be Taught at Secular Universities: Lonergan on Intellectual Conversion

Drawing on Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology (1972) I argue that theology can be taught because personal knowledge, of which it is an instance, is at the heart of academic inquiry; and it should be taught because critical engagement with basic ways of taking one's life as a whole (religion in a broad sense) furnishes a critique of the typical oversights of contemporary culture. The appropriation of one's subjectivity entails an awareness of an existential dialectic that pushes towards a decisive option for affirming the possibility and worth of growth in one's powers of self‐determination and self‐transcendence. Thus conversion—precisely defined in terms of this dialectic—has moral and intellectual dimensions whose promotion goes to the heart of the academic enterprise. By separating out those disciplines (systematics, for example) which are mediated by the existential stance taken by the scholar, Lonergan allows theology to be seen as one world view among others.     

The pedagogical balancing act: teaching reflection in higher education

Despite the common use of the term reflection in higher education assessment tasks, learners are not often taught how to communicate their disciplinary knowledge through reflection. This paper argues that students can and should be taught how to reflect in deep and transformative ways. It highlights the reflexive pedagogical balancing act of attending to different levels of reflection as a way to stimulate focused, thoughtful and reasoned reflections that show evidence of new ways of thinking and doing. The paper uses data from a current project to illustrate the effects of focusing on particular levels of reflection in the pedagogical strategies used, and argues that while the goal of academic or professional reflection is generally to move students to the highest level of reflection to transform their learning/practice, unless higher education teachers attend to every level of reflection, there are specific, observable gaps in the reflections that students produce.     

Is That an Action Man in There? Masculinity as an Imaginative Act of Self-creation

The concept of masculinity has been critiqued either as an ideological effect of patriarchy or as a play of discourse. This occurs at a time when there is renewed interest in biologically reductive theories of gender, and in the context (in the UK) of public disquiet about boys' academic performance. This paper argues that while masculinity cannot be regarded as a foundational subject, the reality of the category 'masculinity' in the daily lives of students and teachers means that we have to take account of how it structures both the social and pedagogic life of the classroom. The paper demonstrates how an imagined sense of masculinity--the masculine social imaginary--appears as a reality in the boys' narratives of self. The paper also argues that while this masculine social imaginary provides the semantic logic of gender, it is in the moment-to-moment interactions that boys have to assert and seek recognition of themselves as male. 'Masculinity' continues to be a useful sociological concept.     

Teachers interacting with students: an important (and potentially overlooked) domain for academic development during times of impact

ABSTRACT

This article is situated in the context of an intensified discourse within which academic developers are being asked to provide evidence of impact, and argues that theoretical models currently used are imprecise and fail to capture the variation in outcomes from professional development activities. Through reference to previous research on how teachers' thinking can be described in relation to various thinking-zones, and how teachers notice and respond to signs of student learning, we suggest a more fine-grained perspective. Furthermore, we argue that improved models for design and evaluation of professional development might prove crucial for academic development as a profession.     

Knowing the subject matter of a secondary‐school science subject

This paper examines the fundamental yet largely neglected distinction between school subjects and academic disciplines in the discourse on teachers’ specialized subject‐matter knowledge. It analyses and critiques the curricular positions embedded in that discourse in the light of five possible relationships between school subjects and academic disciplines. Invoking Dewey’s logical‐psychological distinction and research findings, the paper argues that the subject matter of a secondary‐school science subject instead of the subject matter of its parent academic discipline lies at the heart of secondary‐school science teachers’ specialized subject‐matter knowledge. Knowing such subject matter entails knowing five intersecting dimensions: the logical, the psychological, the pedagogical, the epistemological, and the sociocultural. Implications are drawn concerning theorizing about what secondary‐school science teachers need to know about the subject matter they are expected to teach, subject‐matter preparation for teaching, and the development of secondary‐school science curriculum materials.     

Teachers’ negative experiences and expressions of emotion: being true to yourself or keeping you in your place?

A discourse of marketisation prevails in recent publications on higher education in Ireland. Higher education is urged to heed the call to the markets and to become the driver of Ireland's future economic success, as Ireland seeks to build a knowledge-based economy. This article questions the dominant marketisation discourse in higher education. It explores the arguments for and against a market-led approach to education and argues that there can be no pure markets in education. It suggests that the real discourse is one of urging universities to follow government- or corporate-led agendas. It proposes a wider-encompassing discourse on higher education's role in society rather than one confined to the socially constructed language of performativity.     

Perspective

The discourse on internationalisation has undergone a transformation in recent years, particularly in the sphere of education, where the term's centrality has long been undeniable. This discourse has evolved from a focus on internationalisation's increasing importance in education to a mounting critique regarding the process's utility and incorrect interpretation of its meaning by countries and higher education institutions. This critique attributes to internationalisation many negative implications linked to neoliberalism within the socio-economic discourse and thus raising the need for novel theoretical conceptualisation of the term that will allow further development of empirical research and academic discourse. The present article discusses the need to redefine the concept of internationalisation, and proposes a new definition for internationalisation. The article argues that negative by-products should not be a reason to dismiss a concept that has significance for learners and the education system.     

Exploring the boundary between school science and everyday knowledge in primary school pedagogic practices

This paper explores the different ways that primary school teachers in Uganda navigate the boundary between school science and everyday knowledge in the context of a centrally mandated curriculum innovation. The paper is based on a study of the pedagogic practices of 16 teachers in eight Ugandan primary schools that were selected on the basis of having a track record of either high or low academic achievement in the public primary school‐leaving examination. The official primary school curriculum in Uganda prescribes that science be taught in an integrated form, including integration between science subject knowledge and everyday knowledge. The strategies that teachers in the study adopted in relating science to everyday knowledge was a key feature that differentiated between pedagogic practices in the high‐performing and low‐performing schools. In high‐performing schools, teachers recruited everyday knowledge as a resource for learning science as a specialised discourse; whereas in the low‐performing schools, acquiring everyday knowledge was viewed as an end in itself. The paper, then, considers the implications of differences in teachers' pedagogic strategies for the kinds of knowledge to which learners are given access.     

Is There a Need for Transcendental Arguments in Discourse Ethics?

In this essay, James Scott Johnston examines Jürgen Habermas's transcendental justification of his discourse theory of morality. According to Johnston, the application of Habermas's theory to educational issues often assumes that this justification is a cogent one. However, if the theory is to provide reasoned and appropriate guidance for educators, the justification of discourse ethics requires closer examination. Johnston argues that Habermas's so‐called “weak” transcendental approach is in fact unsustainable because it fails to reconcile two conflicting schools of philosophical thought: Kant's transcendental idealism and George Herbert Mead's social pragmatism. Johnston concludes that a more plausible justification of the discourse ethical project can be achieved by rejecting Habermas's Kantianism and appealing solely to Mead's social pragmatic conception of rationality.     

Contemporary Art and the Role of Interpretation: Reflections from Tate Modern's Summer Institute for Teachers

Recent research indicates that the taught curriculum in art and design secondary school education pays scant attention to meaning‐making in visual art. This article explores possibilities for teaching interpretation through a report on an action‐research project based on Tate Modern's Summer Institute for Teachers. In doing so it argues for the value and necessity of interpretation as a taught skill.     

Creating open and lifelong learning institutions in higher education: a Namibian case-study

The paper explores the changing nature of the roles of universities in developing countries at the outset of the 21st century. It argues that, while remaining centres of academic excellence and creative thought, they must be prepared to add to these roles if they are likely to continue to attract public funding. They must become institutions which seek to provide their knowledge and academic expertise, which they create through much research and traditionally passed on through on-campus teaching, to a much wider community than could ever be reached in this way. This is the role of a university of open and lifelong learning. In previous generations univeristies have argued that they could only pass on their knowledge to the number of students they could accommodate in their classrooms. Modern ICT facilities make such restrictive criticism no longer viable. Universities can now, through distance learning techniques and open learning philosophies, reach out to the whole community in which they serve. This required not only new approaches to teaching and delivering their degrees and diplomas but also an acceptance that the most sophisticated concepts can be taught in formats and language that adults, however limited their formal education, can understand. The paper argues this is the role of the university and uses current debates and developments in the University of Namibia to illustrate how this transformation could take place.     

The work of academic development – occupational identity,standards of practice,and the virtues of association

Abstract

The paper addresses the questions of identity, ethics and organization for academic developers ('AD’ is used as an umbrella for academic staff development plus a number of other academic‐related professional university roles). It inquires into the degree of role differentiation between this occupational cluster and others that resemble it, outside as well as inside the universities. It argues, following Clark and Boyer, that ‘AD’ is both a scholarly and an academic pursuit, and adds that it is characterized uniquely by its focus on change and development, and that the nature of its ‘discipline’ is somewhat problematic. The paper examines the occupational freedoms of AD people and their special knowledge‐base, and argues for a ‘temptations‐based’ rather than a ‘virtues‐based’ approach to creating an ethical schema. It concludes with observations about how to achieve a firm professional identity for AD and recommends new organizational machinery to both politicize and defend the distinctive AD role in academia.     

Close encounters of a bilingual kind: interactional practices in the primary classroom in Brunei

Little is known about the effectiveness of the interactional systems through which meaning is constructed in classrooms in multilingual contexts. Although language can be `planned', the actual discourse of the classroom is `unplanned'. It is well-attested that the discourse of the upper primary classroom in Brunei includes the use of Malay alongside the official language of the classroom, English. This paper argues that as talk is potentially the most valuable resource in the classroom, educational planning should take into account the existing communicative practices in the classroom.     

批判理论视域内的媒体认知力探析

媒体认知力是近年学界讨论的热门话题。在正确揭示该概念内涵的基础上,将其置于马克思主义视域内审视,从发生学角度理清该概念的支援背景。当前西方媒体理论的实质乃是一种基于文化救赎论的民主激进主义,其困境在于从强调媒体认知力走向知识分子救赎论和乌托邦式的媒体教育学。     

An ‘infusion’ approach to critical thinking: Moore on the critical thinking debate

This paper argues that general skills and the varieties of subject‐specific discourse are both important for teaching, learning and practising critical thinking. The former is important because it outlines the principles of good reasoning simpliciter (what constitutes sound reasoning patterns, invalid inferences, and so on). The latter is important because it outlines how the general principles are used and deployed in the service of ‘academic tribes’. Because critical thinking skills are—in part, at least—general skills, they can be applied to all disciplines and subject‐matter indiscriminately. General skills can help us assess reasoning independently of the vagaries of the linguistic discourse we express arguments in. The paper looks at the debate between the ‘specifists’—those who stress the importance of critical thinking understood as a subject‐specific discourse—and the ‘generalists’—those that stress the importance of critical thinking understood independently of disciplinary context. The paper suggests that the ‘debate’ between the specifists and the generalists amounts to a fallacy of the false alternative, and presents a combinatory‐‘infusion’ approach to critical thinking.     

Defining and seeking to identify critical Internet literacy: a discourse analysis of fifth‐graders' Internet search and evaluation activity

Pedagogic focus is shifting increasingly from teaching students to search the Internet efficiently to encouraging critical Internet literacy, but this paper argues that these more complex and subtle skills are both challenging to teach and difficult to identify. The paper presents an analysis of the discourse of triads of fifth graders undertaking an Internet search task that emphasised decisions relating to the trustworthiness and relevance of websites. The analysis uses two lenses – the Vygotskian concept of obuchenie and Mercer's notion of ‘inter‐thinking’ – to help identify discourse markers that could support teachers in identifying and teaching critical Internet literacy. More work is needed, but it is argued that if our goal is to develop critical Internet literacy, the concept of obuchenie helps us to understand the socio‐cognitive prerequisites of group learning in Internet searching tasks, while the concept of ‘interthinking’ offers us a distribution mechanism that can be applied in helping students acquire the skills of independent and critical analysis as they carry out those tasks.     

‘But sir,I lied’ – the value of autobiographical discourse in the classroom

This article aims to examine the benefits of teachers using their own autobiographical writing in the classroom. It explores the blurring of truth and fiction in autobiographical writing and argues that teachers can help students if they provide students with the cloak of fiction when writing about their own lives. Furthermore, it puts forward the case that when teachers share pertinent autobiographical episodes then pupils are more willing to respond in an engaged and passionate fashion. In developing my argument, I suggest that autobiographical writing can be therapeutic in certain classroom contexts. The data sources for this article are the author's own life and two case studies: an 11‐year‐old boy, George, and a 15‐year‐old girl, Eloise, both of whom were pupils of the author and wrote autobiographically for him. The methodological approach is that of bricolage: chiefly, the article combines ethnographical observation with interviews and discourse analysis. I also examine quantitative studies which look at the therapeutic dimensions of autobiographical writing. Theoretically I draw on Friere's concept of ‘conscientization’ (Friere 1985: 49) in order to critique the ‘banking’ concept of education, which would close down opportunities for pupils to write freely about their own lives.