The Context of Thought Experiments in Physics Learning

This paper takes a cognitive perspective in an attempt to analyze mental mechanisms involved in contextual learning. In the following, it is suggested that contextualized environments evoke mental mechanisms that support reasoning about what if, imaginary situations – utilizing a powerful mental mechanism known from the history of physics as thought experiments (TEs). Thought experiments are associated with visualization of data and imagery that originate in implicit knowledge. This paper suggests that thought experiments rely on sensory memories constructed by the learner during past experience. Such sensory memories are activated by the context. The first part of the paper deals with the definition, nature, incidents, and experimental data related to implicit knowledge and TEs. Empirical results are then analyzed in order to explore the role of sensory memories and underlying schemata in TEs, thereby suggesting a set of embodied schemata that act as implicit assumptions and provide context-dependent epistemological primitives that underlie imaginary events in a manner that will statistically match the outer world.     

Facilitating Meta‐learning in Art and Design Education

Art and design programmes are educationally unique in that students themselves play a central role in determining their own learning needs. To be successful in their study, art and design students are required to operate with a high degree of independence and self‐direction. Developing the skills for greater self‐reliance requires students to become aware of their conceptions of the subject of study, and of themselves as learners in a particular learning context. Developing greater self‐awareness as a learner and becoming more independent in one's learning is captured by the concept of meta‐learning. In this article I present an alternative strategy to prevalent diagnostic approaches to assist in developing a student's capacity for meta‐learning in the subject context of art and design. An inquiry cycle was created to provide a structure within which to facilitate generative thinking about learning through engaging with fundamental questions related to the subject of learning (art and design) rather than the learning subject (i.e. the student). This method represents a departure from existing approaches to engaging students in meta‐learning. A pilot study used to trial the effectiveness of this strategy is also presented here. The inquiry map, and the conceptual base upon which it was developed, were found to be useful ways to structure reflective thinking about learning and to assist in developing a student's conception of the subject.     

Partially Identified Treatment Effects for Generalizability

Recent methods to improve generalizations from nonrandom samples typically invoke assumptions such as the strong ignorability of sample selection, which is challenging to meet in practice. Although researchers acknowledge the difficulty in meeting this assumption, point estimates are still provided and used without considering alternative assumptions. We compare the point identifying assumption of strong ignorability of sample selection with two alternative assumptions—bounded sample variation and monotone treatment response—that partially identify the parameter of interest, yielding interval estimates. Additionally, we explore the role that population data frames play in contributing identifying power for the interval estimates. We situate the comparison around causal generalization with nonrandom samples by applying the assumptions to a cluster randomized trial in education. Bounds on the population average treatment effect are derived under the alternative assumptions and the case when no assumptions are made on the data. While comparing the bounds, we discuss the plausibility of each alternative assumption and the practical trade-offs. We highlight the importance of thoughtfully considering the role that assumptions play in causal generalization by illustrating the differences in inferences from different assumptions.     

Reforming practice or modifying reforms?: Elementary teachers' response to the tools of reform

Understanding the interaction between internally constructed and externally imposed aspects of the teaching context may be the missing link between calls for school reform and teachers' interpretation and implementation of that reform. Although the context of the local school culture has a profound impact on teachers, there are other external forces that are specifically aimed at influencing teachers' pedagogical and curricular decisions. These externally imposed aspects of context include some of the existing tools of reform, such as national standards, mandated state core curricula, and related criterion‐referenced testing. However, little is known about how these reform tools impact teachers' thinking about science and science teaching or how teachers respond to such tools. This study examined the interactions between individual teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning science in elementary school and the tools of reform that are imposed upon them. Comparative case studies were conducted in which two elementary teachers' science instruction, teaching context, and related beliefs were examined, described, and analyzed. In this study, the teachers' fundamental beliefs about science and what it means to teach and learn science influenced their interpretations of the sometimes contradictory messages of reform as they are represented in the standards, mandated curriculum, and end‐of‐level tests. Suggestions about what these findings mean for needed aspects of teacher professional development are offered. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 396–423, 2007     

Ratings of Professional Journals by Teachers of Management

Teachers are encouraged to critically evaluate their philosophy of teaching and to help students recognize and examine their implicit ideas about education as well. This critical evaluation entails examining assumptions about teaching and learning, investigating the implications that follow from those assumptions, and considering alternative ideas about teaching and learning that might better fit educational objectives and practices. A four-step process is suggested that may help facilitate this form of critical analysis, attenuate any clashes of teaching philosophies that might take place between teachers and students, and reduce the unwanted compromises that often ensue.     

Belief change towards self-directed learning in student teachers: immersion in practice or reflection on action

Although belief change in student teachers constitutes a more important aim in programmes of teacher education than knowledge transmission per se, it is by no means clear what prompts a meaningful transition from existing — and often implicit — beliefs to professionally oriented frameworks for teaching. Reflection-oriented learning by student teachers has been put forward as the major route towards helping them to grow in their practice teaching, and to actively involve them in changing and (re)constructing their own knowledge base for teaching. However, practice teaching often severely challenges these constructed beliefs, and so reflection subsequently loses its claim to be a guide to future action. In this study, the dynamic interchange between reflection and immersion into practice teaching is related to the process of belief change, with student teachers engaging in self-directed teaching methods. It challenges long-held assumptions by indicating that reflection after practice may be a more professionally fruitful way of effecting belief change than reflectively preparing student teachers before they enter their practice teaching, with beliefs which are not grounded in their own teaching experience.     

The Relationship between Motivational Beliefs and Learning Strategy Use among Norwegian College Students

We studied how motivational beliefs were related to learning strategy use in 176 Norwegian college students who were in the second year of their teacher training. Students' implicit theories of intelligence, self-efficacy beliefs, and learning strategy use were assessed by self-report instruments. It was found that students who conceived of intelligence as a relatively modifiable quality reported using more strategies than students who had doubts about the modifiability of intelligence. However, the relation between students' theories of intelligence and their learning strategy use varied with the way their theories of intelligence were assessed, with only indirect questions about the modifiability of intelligence yielding a positive relation. Regression analysis and group comparisons suggested that beliefs in the modifiability of intelligence may override the contribution of self-efficacy to students' use of learning strategies. With this study, relations previously emphasized within American theory and research are extended to college students in a different cultural context.     

Building a Professional Learning Community: Teachers’ Documentation of and Reflections on Preschoolers’ Work

This study describes teachers’ experiences in a preschool professional learning community (PLC) in order to gain understanding of the role of documentation in group learning. A central underlying assumption of PLCs is that teacher learning involves talking with colleagues about teaching and grappling with the issues embodied in everyday classroom life. We utilized a qualitative case study design in order to emphasize the situated and contextual nature of teachers’ professional learning in context. Data sources included the following: observations of PLC sessions, interviews with participating teachers, and the classroom documentation teachers shared during the sessions. We found that the incorporation of documentation in the PLC made implicit assumptions about children visible in order to be scrutinized. In addition, the teachers’ reflections on the documentation highlighted conflicting notions about teaching as either technical practice or inquiry. In contrast to traditional delivery approaches to teacher learning, we argue that PLCs focused on documentation encourage teachers to problematize practice rather than simplify it. The process of reflecting on children’s work made shifts in thinking about the nature of teaching possible.     

Learning from MacIntyre about Learning: Finding Room for a Second-Person Perspective?

In this article I try to bring into relief the background significance of learning in Alasdair MacIntyre's writings. After briefly adverting to his own manner of learning from other thinkers, I begin by outlining what he sees as essential to learning in early childhood (§I). Next, I spell out what I take to be important implications for learning, mainly in the context of schooling, of his conception of ‘practice’ (§II). Turning then to the ‘revolutionary Aristotelianism’ of his later work, I elucidate the kind of transformative learning that he deems necessary because of dominant tendencies in late modern societies (§III) and because of key features of human lives—including fallibility, narrativity and ‘final end’—that he analyses in his most recent book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity (§IV). I then consider his conception of how one person's learning can be aided by another, suggesting that this conception would be strengthened by the incorporation of a second-person perspective (§V). I link the absence of such a perspective to what I see as his underestimation of the salience of the teacher–student relationship and his consequently diminished account of teaching—a largely Aristotelian-Thomist account whose strengths in other respects I acknowledge (§VI). I conclude by asking whether this line of criticism, if valid, might not indicate a lack in MacIntyre's conception of personal relationships more generally—despite the great import that he grants to them, for weal or woe, in all human lives (§VII). [The present article is included in wider discussion of issues bearing on learning and teaching in my Persons in Practice: Essays between Education and Philosophy (Wiley, forthcoming)].     

How achievement emotions impact students' decisions for online learning,and what precedes those emotions

This empirical study investigates students' learning choices for mathematics and statistics in a blended learning environment, composed of both online and face-to-face learning components. The students (N = 730) were university freshmen with a strong diversity in prior schooling and a wide range of proficiency in quantitative subjects. In this context, we investigated the impact that individual differences in achievement emotions (enjoyment, anxiety, boredom, hopelessness) had on students' learning choices, in terms of the intensity of using the online learning mode versus the face-to-face mode. Unlike the general level of learning activities, which is only minimally influenced by achievement emotions, these emotions appear to have a moderately strong effect on a student's preference for online learning. Following this, we explored the antecedents of achievement emotions. Through the use of path-modeling, we conclude that while goal setting behavior only marginally impacts achievement emotions, effort views—a crucial component of the social-cognitive model of implicit theories of intelligence—have a substantial impact on achievement emotions.     

Models of Language,Models of Childhood in the English National Curriculum

This paper explores the versions of language and of childhood which implicitly underpin the official National Curriculum for English at Key Stages 1 and 2. It considers the politically charged context of debates about ‘grammar’ and ‘standards’ within which a standardised curriculum is imposed, and the assumptions about language, learning and children which are involved in assessing children's talk. Finally, the article draws on an empirical study of the informal talk of six 8‐ and 9‐year‐old children to present some alternative perspectives on children, language and learning.     

The Meritocratic Conception of Educational Equality: Ideal Theory Run Amuck

The dominant conception of educational equality in the United States is meritocratic: an individual's chances of educational achievements should track only (natural) talent and effort, not social class or other morally irrelevant factors. The meritocratic conception must presuppose that natural talent and effort can be isolated from social class — and environmental factors in general — if it is to provide guidance in the world of educational policy and practice. In this article Kenneth R. Howe challenges that presupposition and related elements of the meritocratic conception having to do with the role of competition and education as a positional good. Howe argues that, in use, the meritocratic conception unavoidably distributes education based on developed talent and motivation that cannot be isolated from the effects of social class, thus masking the real basis of the distribution and contributing to the perpetuation of illicit group privilege. Howe then entertains and rejects several rejoinders to his critique, including that the meritocratic conception might eliminate the presupposition of isolatable natural talent. Finally, Howe sketches an alternative conception of educational equality based on Elizabeth Anderson's adaptation of Rawls's “democratic equality.”     

Taking a new look at cultural attitudes in multilingual settings: Stories and storying in teacher training

Cultural attitudes and expectations in multilingual educational settings are closely related to teachers’ implicit theories about children growing up “between two different cultures” and about their role as “knowledgeable practitioners.” These assumptions are in themselves neither discriminating nor explicitly judgmental. Nevertheless, they may obstruct truly intercultural learning and teaching experiences and should be made the subject of teacher training. Data collected during the in-service training of preschool and primary school teachers are the basis for the analysis of these assumptions and for exemplifying a strategy for enhancing cultural awareness. The use of narrative — i.e. the creation and interpretation of stories — is discussed as a method that encourages practitioners to take a new look at their preconceptions and images and to engage in a conscious process of “meaning making”.     

Understanding teaching or teaching for understanding: Alternative frameworks for science classrooms

We came to this study with a set of beliefs about good science teaching that had been heavily influenced by the constructivist literature of the past decade. In this article we reexamine some of our own assumptions about good teaching by exploring the classroom practices of an experienced physics teacher. This teacher did not fit the mold of the constructivist teacher and, yet, there was much to suggest that he was meeting the needs of the students in his class. His methods were almost entirely whole class—focusing mainly on physics content, examination technique and algorithm practice. Our close observation of this teacher in his Grade 11 classroom over several months suggests an alternative framework for examining his work. We examine this framework through a number of themes: teacher confidence, the structure of the discipline, student motivation, trust, and the cultural context of learning. We argue for a broader view of good science teaching than that proposed by the constructivist literature, one that takes into account teachers' and students' understandings of science in relation to their social and cultural contexts.     

Learning analytics: challenges and limitations

Learning analytic implementations are increasingly being included in learning management systems in higher education. We lay out some concerns with the way learning analytics – both data and algorithms – are often presented within an unproblematized Big Data discourse. We describe some potential problems with the often implicit assumptions about learning and learners – and indeed the tendency not to theorize learning explicitly – that underpin such implementations. Finally, we describe an attempt to devise our own analytics, grounded in a sociomaterial conception of learning. We use the data obtained to suggest that the relationships between learning and the digital traces left by participants in online learning are far from trivial, and that any analytics that relies on these as proxies for learning tends towards a behaviorist evaluation of learning processes.     

Rethinking the relationship between research and practice in teaching

The paper examines the relationship between contemporary research on teaching and teaching practice, including the varied reasons educators give for the weak relationship, several questionable assumptions researchers share about the linkage between research and practice, and researchers' implicit view that teaching is an applied science. As an alternative to the applied science conception, the author proposes teaching be viewed as a moral craft. In comparison to the applied science conception, the moral craft perspective engenders a more holistic view of teaching, leads to a stronger link between research on teaching and teaching practice, and decreases the likelihood that research on teaching will mask normative issues fundamental to teaching practice.     

Sequential Implicit Learning Ability Predicts Growth in Reading Skills in Typical Readers and Children with Dyslexia

ABSTRACT

This study investigated in a longitudinal design how 74 Dutch children with dyslexia and 39 typically developing peers differed in sequential versus spatial implicit learning and overnight consolidation, and it examined whether implicit learning related to (pseudo)word reading development in Grades 5 and 6. The results showed that sequential, but not spatial, learning predicted growth in reading skills in children with and without dyslexia. Sequential implicit learning was also related to growth in pseudoword reading skills during an intervention in children with dyslexia, retrospectively. Furthermore, children with dyslexia had longer reaction times in general but did not differ from typical readers in how well or how quickly they learned either on an implicit learning task or in their overnight consolidation.     

In Search of a “Benevolent Despot”: John T. Emlen and the Establishment of the First Colored Boys’ Club, 1903–1913

This article examines the establishment and early history of the first Boys’ Club for African American boys—the Wissahickon Boys’ Club—through the thoughts and actions of its Quaker founder, John Thompson Emlen. The purpose of this article is not only to document the founding of this historic organization but also to describe Emlen's conception of racial advancement through the implementation of vocational education programs within the context of a “colored” Boys’ Club. In examining Emlen's thesis and subsequent work, the article analyzes the similarities of his ideas to W. E. B. DuBois's charge to White Americans in The Philadelphia Negro.     

Prospective gymnasium teachers' conceptions of chemistry learning and teaching

The aim of the study was to investigate prospective gymnasium teachers' conceptions of chemistry learning and teaching. Data were collected through individual interviews with nine prospective teachers at one German university. Phenomenography served as the methodological framework for the study. The findings revealed that chemistry learning is conceptualized as gaining knowledge, problem-solving and constructing personal understandings; and that chemistry teaching is conceptualized as transferring knowledge, problem-posing and interacting with pupils. The majority of the prospective teachers' conceptions of learning chemistry were considered reproductive rather than constructive and their conceptions of chemistry teaching were viewed as facilitating reproductive learning. Comparisons of the dominant conceptions of learning chemistry and teaching chemistry held by each prospective teacher revealed mixed support for the assumption that if one holds a reproductive (or constructive) conception of teaching, then (s)he will also hold a reproductive (or constructive) conception of learning. Support for the assumption was found in the reproductive-oriented relationship between conceptions of learning chemistry as gaining knowledge and of teaching chemistry as transferring knowledge, but not found in the relationships between learning chemistry as problem-solving and teaching chemistry as problem-posing and between learning chemistry as gaining knowledge and interacting with pupils.     

Appealing to the soul: towards a Judeo-Christian theory of learning

Beginning with the recognition that every learning theory rests on particular assumptions about the nature and capacities of the learners, this study provides an examination of the implicit premises upon which several of the more prominent learning theories - behaviourism, cognitivism, situated learning, and social cognitivism - have been built. Even as each theory is found to propose a slightly distinct conceptualization of human nature, none are found to accommodate acknowledgement of the role of the soul, the spiritual dimension, in determining individuals' ability to learn. Expanding on Habermas's and Mezirow's ideas of learning domains as popularized by Cranton (1994), this paper shows that ultimately, the learning transaction hinges upon the phenomena of perceptions, and perceptions are realized through the realms of physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual input. This reconceptualization of learning to include the soul as a key determinant concludes with a concrete explanation of how acknowledgement of humans' spiritual dimension holds significant potential for enhancing teaching-learning situations.