The past,history, and education

If you mention ‘educational reform’ in a room full of educators in the US, prepare to leave the room with your ears burning. For most teachers and school administrators in the US, ‘educational reform’ currently means standards, curriculum frameworks, mandatory state tests for students, and sanctions for schools if test scores fail to rise. Although some educators see benefits in parts of this agenda, many find that their jobs have become more stressful and less rewarding, and they wonder how schools got into their current situation. Reading the two books reviewed in this essay provides some answers, including insights into what motivates educational reformers and into why reforms often play out differently from what their designers intended.     

Mathematical history,philosophy and education

History of mathematics occupies itself describing processes of growth and development, whereas philosophy of mathematics is concerned with questions of justification. Both play an essential role within the educational context. But there is a problem because genuine historical studies necessitate ever greater particularity whereas mathematics and philosophy require generality and abstraction. The paper offers some methodological reflections about these matters together with two case studies from nineteenth century history of arithmetic and integration theory, respectively, which try to strike a balance between the directly opposed requirements.     

Quentin Skinner,intentionality and the history of education

This article attempts to reconsider and re‐evaluate the often misunderstood and mis‐conceptualised notion of “progressivism” within education by examining it through the lens of intentionality, specifically the textual kind prescribed by Quentin Skinner in his seminal work “Visions of Politics” (2002). Locating and explicating his ideas will therefore form the first part of the article. In particular, there will be an examination of his two key analytical concepts, locutionary meaning and illocutionary force, which will act as the methodology for the analysis. The second part of the article will examine how writers of the past have tended to equate the term “progressivism” with “progressive schools”, seeing the concept as floating through time, independent of human agency. There will be a brief discussion on the problems of misconceiving progressivism in this way. To fulfil its chosen aim therefore, the article will use as its focus two contemporaneous educators from the past who have often been seen as fitting into the same, linear progressive tradition: Susan Isaacs and A.S. Neill. The article will demonstrate in its final part, through a Skinnerian examination of one of each of their key texts, how far from fitting into a homogenous progressive discourse Isaacs and Neill were when it came to their intentions and understandings in writing.     

立足文本解读的生命教育

现代社会日益复杂,信息化社会的发展,赋予语文课新的历史使命,如何立足语文文本去关注生命,呵护生命,是一个值得关注的问题。本文立足文本,引导学生关注语文中的生命教育,在散文、小说、诗歌等文学作品中去赏析生命的优美、崇高、悲壮,从而培养积极乐观的生命取向,懂得生命个体展示的不仅仅是活着,更是一种生命智慧。     

依法治教促进职业教育健康发展

为促进职业教育的健康发展，广西壮族自治区人大常委会于２０００年对全区实施《中华人民共和国职业教育法》的情况进行专题检查。这次执法检查范围大，重点突出，有力地引导、促进了全区职业教育的改革与发展。 一、执法检查的内容和方法 自治区人大常委会这次执法检查的内容包括对政府、教育行政部门、行业组织、企事业单位、劳动人事行政部门、职业学校、职业培训机构等机关单位的执行《职业教育法》情况进行全面检查，重点检查１９９７年以来各级政府对《职业教育法》的学习、宣传、实施情况及把发展职业教育列入经济社会发展计划情况；…     

新课程标准下新教材的初探

文章主要通过对高中物理新教材(司南版)和旧版教材的对比,从设计、内容、评价、课程目标等多个方 面进行比较和讨论,以期体会新教材所渗透的崭新的现代教育理念。在文章的最后,也提出了自己的一些困惑,希望能 与大家共同探讨。     

Powerful knowledge,intercultural learning and history education

This article theorizes on the role of school subjects, especially history, in multicultural and intercultural education, arguing that to ensure intercultural learning there is a need to integrate these curricular intentions in subject teaching. However, the epistemological reorganization that such integration involves will challenge both a traditional structured content knowledge, and the multicultural research focused on deconstructing these traditions. This article investigates Michael Young’s concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ as a way to incorporate knowledge in the discourses of intercultural education. While proponents of the intercultural perspective emphasise educational policies and socialisation, advocates of powerful knowledge tend to dismiss such political interference. In order to use powerful knowledge in this context the concept is reconceptualised by relating it to curriculum theory and Gert Biesta’s conceptual distinction between educational purposes. Finally, this intersection is pursued through the example of history education. When acknowledging that societal needs, policy and disciplinary boundaries are interrelated, the perspective of ‘powerful knowledge’ can bring the potential of subject knowledge to intercultural research, and thus prove useful in identifying the guidelines necessary to develop History as a contemporary relevant subject.     

浅谈美国的双语教育

本文从历史的角度 ,分析了美国双语教育的几个计划 ,并从地球村的角度阐述当今汉英教育的现状及其重要性。     

Disciplinary literacy and multimodal text design in physical education

This article argues that scholarship on literacy in and across the disciplines has disproportionately focused on the core subjects of English, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies rather than on “specialist” subjects such as Physical Education. This disparity in emphasis has provided little guidance to specialist teachers seeking to understand and address the literacy demands of subject areas that often privilege an expanded conception of literacy. To illustrate the affordances of such analysis for PE teachers as well as their literacy colleagues, the reading demands of a particular multimodal text from PE—a three‐part basketball play—are presented in light of key themes from the US Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy. Complexities related to collective, embodied, and sequential meaning construction are explored. Recommendations for instruction and professional collaboration are shared.     

历史教学中的美育

在历史教学过程中，教师要有意识地帮助学生树立正确的审美观，培养学生健康的审美趣味和高尚的审美情感，使他们自觉地从审美的角度把握历史知识的内在规律，积累各种审美经验，并提高他们表现美和创造美的能力。     

Teaching the nation: history and nationalism in Polish school history education

This article aims to analyse Polish history teachers’ understanding of the role of teaching history. Drawing on the results of qualitative research conducted in Wroclaw, we argue that teachers see history education through the prism of nationalism. Teachers construct the past in equivocally nationalist terms. They regard nationalist representations of the past as taken for granted. Moreover, teachers reproduce a dominant nationalist discourse by using history to promote the idea of the homogeneous nation. We argue that teachers see their role primarily in terms of imposing the dominant structures of collective memory on the pupils. We also discuss the differences between teachers pertaining to the understanding of the concept of the nation, the way of teaching Polish history and the type of obligation towards the nation. We also demonstrate that teachers do not see a contradiction between history defined as an objective science and history understood as a ‘nationalising’ tool.     

Understanding practices in mathematics education: structure and text

The practices of mathematics education can be investigated at a wide variety of levels: from the actions of individual students or teachers through classroom interactions, school structures, curriculum specifications and materials, teacher development programmes and local, national or international systems of instruction and assessment. These levels are, however, inter-related. The study of a national curriculum gains significance as we see how it impacts upon and is interpreted by teachers and students. The study of an individual’s actions makes more sense when these are interpreted in light of the broader context within which the individual is situated. This article is a version of a plenary lecture presented at the Psychology of Mathematics Education conference in 2009, addressing the conference theme “In Search for Theories in Mathematics Education”. In it, I trace the development of my own search for theories to address my wish to understand practices in the field and suggest some tools from linguistics, critical discourse analysis and social theory that can help to make such connections between the various levels of investigation, illustrating with a range of examples.     

Genetic epistemology,history of science and science education

Conclusions The main feature of Piaget & Garcia's study (1989) is the overture of a new field of research within the Piagetian framework, namely the comparative study of individual and historical development.During the 80's, several alternative models have been offered to account for the relations between individual and historical development. However, it has been suggested that there [...] appears to be widespread agreement among Piagetians and non-Piagetians that common mechanisms and processes underlie the thinking of scientists and children at all times (Gauld 1990, p. 24–5).The development of this field of research demands that theoretical research be conducted regarding the possible patterns of relationship between individual and historical development, that should be integrated to comparative empirical research on diverse topics. Further studies would then be required to provide an empirical basis for the comparative research. In other words, this field of research demands the close collaboration between epistemologists, historians, science educators, and cognitive psychologists.We have suggested that the Piagetian model needs to provide a more convincing account of the differences between individual and historical development, and of the role of internal and external factors in the progress of science. We have also argued for an overcoming of the overemphasized structural aspects of the theory, and for an unambiguous concept of history.The non-Piagetian approaches have their own strength and may be developed as alternatives to the Piagetian model. However, our intention here is to emphasize their potential contribution to the development of Piaget's theory. In McCloskey and Kargon (1988) we may find hints to deal with the specificity of similarities in content. Nersessian (1987) provided an excellent insight on how to deal with Kuhn's concept of incommensurability. ⁵ In our interpretation, Carey's work suggest that considering the relation between content and development of structures may be a productive way of developing Piaget's theory.Finally, we would like to comment on the relationship between Piaget's theory and research on students' thinking in science. Both adopt a constructivist stance. However, the vast majority of researchers have developed a strong resistance to Piaget's theory (e.g. Novak 1978; Gilbert and Swift 1985). On the one hand, this resistance should be considered a natural and healthy tendency toward a pluralistic development of research in science education. On the other hand, it may be a consequence of the difficulty of Piaget's theory in coping with the main research findings on spontaneous reasoning. In short, while many researchers in science education have emphasized the persistence of children's, adolescents' and adults' alternative conceptions, Piaget's theory suggests that reaching the formal stage is a necessary condition to understand science. This contradiction will not be overcome while Piagetian researchers are not able to offer a better account of the differences between commonsense knowledge and scientific knowledge. Freed from the constraints of the Piagetian approach, research on alternative conceptions showed an amazing development during the late 70's and the 80's. ^6,7 Further progress, however, increasingly requires theoretical tools to manage the great amount of data already available, and models to explain, rather than just describe, individuals' thought. This task can be carried out from within different theoretical approaches. In Psychogenesis and the History of Science, Piaget and Garcia presented an updated and strong model for the relationship between individual and historical development. If used in an open-minded way, this model may contribute to the development of research in science education.This study was supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico/Brazil.