Between Education and Opinion-Making

The fields of science education and science communication are said to have developed as disparate fields of research and practice, operating based on somewhat different logics and premises about their audiences. As the two fields share many of the same goals, arguments have been made for a rapprochement between the two. Drawing inspiration from a historical debate between the scholars John Dewey and Walter Lippmann, the present article is a case-oriented theoretical contribution applying models from science education and science communication in relation to a current socio-scientific issue (SSI), the COVID-19 pandemic. The main question of interest is how selected didactic (didaktik) models from science education and science communication can contribute to shed light on the present situation of an ongoing pandemic specifically and socio-scientific issues in general. Three models are synthesised to give a new composite model that may help communicators and educators understand, discuss, and analyse complex socio-scientific issues. The model is subsequently applied on the apparently contradictory issue of Norwegian and Swedish governments’ very different responses to the pandemic, despite grounding their decisions on largely the same scientific evidence and advice. Contrast is made by comparison with another SSI, anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It is argued that the exchange and combination of didactic models from the two fields may open new spaces for cross-pollination and cross-fertilisation to the mutual benefit of both science education and science communication.

     

Not by the hair of your chinny chin‐chin,I'm not so sure that we're letting you in

Abstract

It's no good telling people what you want if what you want is for them to know without your telling them.(Tannen, 1986, p.57)

Deborah Tannen cites conversations between men and women to explore how metamessages (rapport, directness/indirectness, connectedness/avoidance) in communication impact our relationships for the better and often for worse. In many ways, this dance of communication plays out in the female mentorship of males in early childhood preservice experiences. The metamessages of females impact their effectiveness in mentorship and impacts how males look upon their career choice and their own sense of efficacy to carry out their roles as early childhood educators.

Gender bias subtly weaves its ways into the fabric of professional ethos of educational practice. The female ethos in early childhood education often acts as a finely woven screen that makes it difficult for men to open the door to try out,let alone enter the profession. The invisible questioning screens of Do males care, notice detail, do they clearly see children's needs, do they understand the female way?need to be explored so that supportive mentorship can be consciously extended to male preservice educators. This article tells the stories of two male preservice educators and their struggles to open the door of the female ethos in their clinical experiences. Their stories point to the idea that we still have a long way to go to support males in their initial journey to become early childhood educators. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.     

Levinas and the "inter-face": The ethical challenge of online education

The capacity of online education to produce learning environments that are supportive of hybrid identities, complex discourses, and multiple relations among learners raises questions about the ethical response of online educators. To investigate the ethics of online education, we discuss two questions: How are identity and communication constituted in online education? What are the features of an ethical pedagogy in online education? Such questions help us think in alternative ways about the ethical dimensions of online education. We argue that Emmanuel Levinas's views on ethics and otherness can overcome some of the ethical challenges inherent in online education by helping educators and learners become more aware of how they respond to the Other and consider their ethical responsibility to the Other's multiple and complex identities. An ethical pedagogy for online education that takes seriously the unknowable and irreducible Other has the potential to provide us with a different notion of what constitutes ethical pedagogies.     

Teacher agency in the Canadian context: linking the how and the what

Even though there is no common conceptual basis guiding teacher education in Canada, over the past two decades teacher educators both in Canada and around the world have called for teacher candidates to become agents of change. While researchers across Canada strive to demonstrate how to prepare pre- and in-service teachers to be agents of change, few scholars have examined in detail what teacher agency might mean in the Canadian context. This paper reviews the conceptualisation of agency from five theoretical perspectives (psychology, sociology, critical theory, historical studies, and post-structuralism) and examines how empirical studies in the Canadian contexts align with these perspectives. This paper makes explicit the connections between the how and the what of agency, and as such informs current approaches to preparing pre- and in-service teachers and their potential role as agents of change, and maps out how the notion of agency is taken up in a particular jurisdiction.     

Teacher agency and school-based curriculum in China’s non-elite schools

Mainland China has been embarking on a nation-wide education reform as part of its modernisation project for the past few decades. A relatively under-researched topic is teacher agency in non-elite schools where educators critically shape their reactions to new situations brought about by the reform. Focussing on the introduction of school-based curriculum in China, this article discusses how some educators from non-elite schools respond strategically to new opportunities and resources by promoting indigenous knowledge via engaging teaching methods. The essay illustrates, through two examples, how non-elite schools seek to provide the best kind of education available to their students by integrating Confucian and ethnic cultures into the formal curriculum. China’s experience demonstrates the exercise of teacher agency that arises from the interplay of human efforts, available capital and contingent factors. It also highlights the potential of utilising indigenous sources and synthesising them with non-local sources as part of implementing education reform.     

Troubling identities: teacher education students' constructions of class and ethnicity

Working with diverse student populations productively depends on teachers and teacher educators recognizing and valuing difference. Too often, in teacher education programs, when markers of identity such as gender, ethnicity, ‘race’, or social class are examined, the focus is on developing student teachers' understandings of how these discourses shape learner identities and rarely on how these also shape teachers' identities. This article reports on a research project that explored how student teachers understand ethnicity and socio‐economic status. In a preliminary stage of the research, we asked eight Year 3 teacher education students who had attended mainly Anglo‐Australian, middle class schools as students and as student teachers, to explore their own ethnic and classed identities. The complexities of identity are foregrounded in both the assumptions we made in selecting particular students for the project and in the ways they constructed their own identities around ethnicity and social class. In this article we draw on these findings to interrogate how categories of identity are fluid, shifting and ongoing processes of negotiation, troubling and complex. We also consider the implications for teacher education.     

The Post-Modern Student

Abstract

The differences between present-day post-modern students and educators from older generations require changes in educational approach, but also challenge post-modern trends. Students' postmodern experiences may lead them to seek individuality among diverse sources of identity, seeing knowledge as a throwaway consumption good, and education promotes flexibility and “edutainment.” However, professional education trains people for structured managerialist organisations and the accumulation of shared professional knowledge. Social work education needs to be reframed as a process of emergence in which educators and students work jointly to create knowledge and identity in their professional area. To operate in an increasingly complex and changing society, students need to create a strong professional identity and learn how to transfer knowledge and values from one situation to another. In this way, social work education connects with the Danish managerial concept of “chaos pilots” in which students are prepared to deal with cultural and social change.     

A narrative examination of early childhood teachers’ shared identities in teamwork

This study examines the two kindergarten teachers’ shared professional identities in teamwork in an effort to clarify what constitutes their shared identities and how these identities affect the teachers’ professional practices and beliefs. The relational nature of identity maintains that individuals are not the only constructors of their identity, and the literature on teacher education emphasizes the importance of identity in teacher development. The in-depth analysis of the two kindergarten teachers’ narrative interviews revealed how the educators constructed their professional identities by intertwining the features of their context, feedback, and teaching. The findings indicate that the shared professional identities of the two early childhood teachers are developed and negotiated through four shared features: commitment, feedback, educational tasks, and professional agency. Together these four shared features shape the teachers’ professional roles and pedagogical practices—either by giving support to professional growth and empowerment or by having a decreasing effect on the teachers’ professional identity and agency in early childhood contexts.     

How meaning-oriented learning is enhanced in Dutch academic primary teacher education

The present study identifies ways of how meaning-oriented learning is enhanced in academic primary teacher education, a new route to the teaching profession in the Netherlands. Meaning-oriented learners are generally described in the literature as being capable to regulate their own learning, to understand a topic thoroughly, to form their own opinion about it and to draw their own conclusions. Semi-structured interviews were held with both student teachers (n = 32) and educators (n = 18) who participated in this new route. Interviewees perceived common ways of enhancing meaning-oriented learning, such as encouraging students to structure, relate and critically process knowledge. Other ways are related to the development of students’ professional identity as an academic primary teacher in general, for example, through students’ reflection on the development of such an identity and their sharing of knowledge, not only with peers and educators, but also externally in publications, on a conference or on the Web. The present study indicates that the newly developed route to the teaching profession successfully contains elements that provoke meaning-oriented learning. The results of this study are useful for the (further) development of teacher education contexts in which the enhancement of meaning-oriented learning by student teachers is an important aim.     

Lessons from lockdown: Autistic students,parents and mainstream schools

This paper reports on the findings of a BERA-funded small-scale project that explores the impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns on the educational experiences of autistic children and young people who attend mainstream schools and their parents/carers in England. We observe that, unsurprisingly, lockdown resulted in associated stresses for families. However, our main argument is that for the participants, the pandemic has not been experienced to the same extent as is popularly understood; that is, causing major disruption to children's schooling experiences and/or unusual levels of social isolation. Using the concept of stigma as a theoretical resource, we argue that this is because the families with whom we spoke were already experiencing, pre-COVID-19, disrupted schooling and degrees of social isolation. Indeed, for many of the young people, the break from school occasioned by lockdown allowed them a release from the more negative and stigmatising aspects of their routine experiences within school. We therefore argue that the disruption of the pandemic sheds light on how stigma shapes students' daily school experiences.     

Investigating science teacher educator identity through the politics of domestication and critical positional praxis

The focus on identity in the field of teaching and learning continues to grow, especially when it concerns equitable outcomes for students. While most attention is placed on students' identities and increasingly those of teachers, lesser addressed are the identities of the teacher educators and researchers broaching the issue of identity. Additionally, identity research is not often linked to relationships between self, others, and transformative action. We recognize these as gaps to be addressed and offer critical positional praxis (CPP) as a response. CPP is the public manifestation of the insights gained through our sense of identity and reflexivity. More specifically, CPP is the actions (or inactions) that express who we are in response to an event in any given social context—especially oppressive ones. In this article, we draw from our own critical autoethnographies, as a context for putting CPP into practice in identity research. Our collective analysis of these critical autoethnographies revealed how our identity development was inseparable from the ways in which we have each resisted the politics of domestication. Our autoethnographies further point to the role of dissent as central to our experiences of becoming critical science teacher educators committed to equity, diversity, and anti-racism in education. We draw from this analysis to offer recommendations for how identity and positionality can move beyond theoretical constructs toward transformative personal and collective change in science education.     

Using Interaction Content Analysis Instruments to Assess Distance Learning

Summary

Utilizing the full potential of distance education requires an understanding of how the absence of face-to-face communication affects the relationship between teaching behaviors and learning outcomes. Teachers' awareness of how their teaching behaviors change across distance and conventional contexts can assist them in overcoming the limitations of distance learning. This paper describes the development of two content analysis instruments for analyzing teacher-learner interaction patterns in order to enable educators to (a) identify the effect of separation from learners by space and/or time, (b) examine the relationship between interaction patterns and learning outcomes, (c) identify teacher-learner interactions which comprise essential elements of effective distance education, (d) increase the effectiveness of the instructional design, (e) plan more effective staff development programs, and (f) enable decision makers to assess the effectiveness of distance learning programs.     

We Got Soul: Exploring Contemporary Black Women Educators’ Praxis of Politicized Care

In this critical case study, I draw on endarkened feminist epistemology and a legacy of politicized womanist care to explore how three contemporary black women educators in New York City public schools enact a spiritual and politicized care rooted in their understandings of the sociopolitical contexts where their students live and learn. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed to reveal a praxis of politicized care characterized by three main components: (1) Soulful and politicized purpose driving high expectations; (2) Building relationships through vulnerability, encouragement, communication, and recognition; and (3) Redefining success and envisioning paths for the future. Examining such praxis provides insight into approaches educators can take to create connections with students that are responsive to their material lives and helps them feel grounded in their educational and professional pursuits.     

Inside research,inside ourselves: teacher educators take stock of their research practice

This paper tells the story of how a group of teacher educators in a university education department used action research to examine their research situation, and what conclusions they reached. Some recent historical background puts the study in context, identifying tensions between university expectations and time‐heavy teaching demands that operated as obstacles to research activity. This context is shared by many academics who provide training for practitioners in UK universities that seek substantial funding through their performance in national research quality assessments. The project was initially organised in Spring 2007 by new research staff who had investigated staff perceptions of and interests in research through semi‐formal interviews, observations and documentation. An invited group turned to action research as a possible way forward. They asked the question ‘What kind of research culture do we want, and how can we get it?’ Over a year, all participants gathered at semi‐formal meetings for collaborative reflection and discussion, engaged in a diversity of micro‐researches that experimented with ways of researching around the barriers, and wrote a collaborative paper about what they had learned. This gave rise to a series of national and international conference presentations that drew several of the group members into the wider research community. The group members grew to realise that the kind of research that they perceived the institution to value was not necessarily a kind that was readily built into their identities as teacher educators. But this realisation itself was empowering, exposing previously opaque assumptions that had left a felt irreconcilability that had been difficult to articulate.     

Views From the Field: Conservation Educators’ and Practitioners’ Perceptions of Education as a Strategy for Achieving Conservation Outcomes

This article presents data from a mixed-methods study that collected data through surveys (n = 656), interviews (n = 15), and discussion groups (n = 75) to explore the use of social strategies such as education and outreach by non-governmental organizations and government agencies to reach outcomes related to biodiversity conservation and resource management. We examine and juxtapose perceptions of conservation practitioners with those of conservation educators regarding the efficacy of education to reach conservation or resource management goals. We explore how to facilitate integration among policy, science, and education efforts, and we suggest theoretical augmentations for conceptions of education and social strategies within conservation organizations.     

Using critical policy analysis to examine competing discourses in zero tolerance legislation: do we really want to leave no child behind?

The increasing use of zero tolerance discipline policies in the USA has led to a ‘discipline gap,’ in which minoritized students receive harsher and more frequent suspensions and expulsions than their peers from dominant cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Though disciplinary decisions are made by educators at the school level, mandates regarding the disciplinary infractions that must result in exclusionary discipline are made at the federal and state levels. Using a theoretical framework that distinguishes the discourse of safety from the discourse of equity, this critical policy analysis examines how state-level zero tolerance legislation portrays educators, students, and school discipline and reflects neoliberal influence. Findings show that these policies narrowly define schools’ roles as developing academic, but not behavioral, skills. Students are portrayed as rational actors who deserve the punishment meted out by educators when students choose to behave disruptively; and educators have absolute power and their decisions regarding student discipline are reflected as being consistent and objective. Nevertheless, legislation in some states also acknowledges students’ needs for a more holistic approach to their education and mandate continued education and support services to help them after they are removed from school. An example from one California district illustrates findings and demonstrates how both discourses are inadequate in challenging neoracism.     

Understanding higher education-based teacher educators’ identities in Hong Kong: a sociocultural linguistic perspective

While teacher educator identities have received increasing attention over the past decade, there is a lack of research on teacher educators’ professional identities in the complex and shifting higher education contexts. Informed by the sociocultural linguistic perspective, this study investigates two language teacher educators’ professional identities in Hong Kong universities. The findings show that the participants discursively constructed their identities, such as “accidental teacher educator,” “teacher educator-researcher,” “struggling researcher,” “teacher of teachers,” and “inactive researcher” in their professional work. By drawing on the three interrelated processes of identity formation (i.e. adequation/distinction, authentication/denaturalisation, and authorisation/illegitimation), the study adds to our knowledge of the complex and contested nature of teacher educator identity in relation to the ongoing restructuring and reform in higher education. The study concludes with some implications for teacher education and higher education.     

History Reproduces Itself: The transmission of symbolic capital at a private liberal arts college in the USA

This paper describes a number of ways in which a small group of gay higher educators draw upon their sexuality in their teaching. It considers three main themes (teaching from the outside; teaching as performance; and teaching as a (gay) person) to illuminate a discussion of how sexuality and teaching can be brought into productive relation. Whilst not wanting to imply a monolithic view of gay sexual identity and its relationship with teaching, the paper explores how the approaches to teaching described disrupt dominant pedagogies and the masculinities which underpin them. The paper concludes by inviting research into the ways in which heterosexual men use their sexuality positively in teaching and learning situations in higher education.