Perceptions of Learning: Interviews with First and Second Graders in a Hungarian Primary School

The paper discusses children’ attitudes towards school and learning soon after entering primary school in Hungary. First and second grade primary school students (N?=?33) were interviewed. The interviews explored the following questions: What are the teachers’ and the children’s roles in the classroom? What is learning? Where do children learn? What kind of learning strategies do students use in arithmetic and reading? How are students evaluated in the school? What do students like best about school? The data suggest that the children quickly adapt to the school environment and, on the whole, have a positive attitude towards school and learning but—with a few exceptions—their views on the role of schooling in life reflect traditional, school subject centred goals and values and little awareness of the learning process.     

Tracking the civil rights and women's movements in the United States

Membership in civil rights and women's liberation organizations in the United States was tracked over a period of 22 years. Men's social and fraternal organizations were also tracked as a comparison group. Systematic fluctuations in membership suggest that this criterion would be useful for identifying the developmental stages of a movement. In addition, peaks in membership were correlated with historical events. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Duverney's skeletons

In 1730, shortly before his death, the Paris anatomist Joseph-Guichard Duverney wrote his will, leaving his anatomical specimens to the Académie des Sciences, of which he was a member. But the will was disputed by Pierre Chirac, supervisor of the Jardin du Roi where Duverney, as professor of anatomy, had performed most of the dissections that produced the specimens. The ensuing debate between Chirac and René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, arguing for the Académie, reveals the tensions surrounding both the concept of intellectual property in this period and the collective enterprise in natural philosophy. The differing roles and audiences of the Académie and the Jardin were central to this debate. In addition, this essay explores the origins and significance of the anatomical specimens themselves and their changing role in instruction and display, as well as the transition from the cabinet of curiosities to the natural history museum.     

金缕梅科银缕梅属与帕罗堤属的亲缘关系——核糖体DNA ITS序列证据

本文对金缕梅科弗特吉族(Molinadendron和Matudaea除外)的细胞核核糖体DNA ITS片段进行了序列分析，在此基础上对该族的演化关系、尤其是中国特有属银缕梅属的系统位置进行了最简约分支分析。基本结果如下：其一，蚊母族和狭义的弗特吉族均不形成自己的单系分支，因此，支持Endress的处理，即合并两族为广义的弗特吉族；其二，银缕梅属同帕罗堤属有着密切的亲缘关系，支持形态学和解剖学结论；其三，根据该片段核苷酸序列的演化速率推算出的银缕梅属和帕罗堤属间分化时间为晚中新世。此结论大致与化石记录相符。     

Teacher Enthusiasm: Reviewing and Redefining a Complex Construct

Educational Psychology Review - The last review on teacher enthusiasm was 45 years ago, and teacher enthusiasm remains a compelling yet complex variable in the educational context. Since...     

Physics students' epistemologies and views about knowing and learning

Classrooms are complex environments in which curriculum, students, and teachers interact. In recent years a number of studies have investigated the effect of teachers' epistemologies on the classroom environment, yet little is known about students' epistemologies and how these interact with those of teachers. The purpose of this study was to document students' epistemologies and their concurrent views about knowing and learning. Using a written essay, short-answer responses to statements, a preferred classroom environment inventory, and interviews, students' views on scientific knowledge and their own knowing and learning were collected from 42 students in three sections of an introductory physics course. Our rather broad, qualitative inquiry provides a dynamic view of students' understanding of knowing and learning in high school physics. Our analyses reveal a spectrum of epistemological commitments commensurable with positions from objectivism to relativism, most of them with experientialist coloring. Even within individuals, these commitments could be at once commensurable and incommensurable with the same epistemological position. We also find rather significant inter- and intra-individual differences with respect to the consequences of a specific epistemological stance to learning, the learning strategies employed, and the learning environment preferred. Students' views on knowing and learning in physics are presented in the form of an emergent theory. The findings are discussed in terms of their application to classroom environments.     

Incorporating out-of-school mathematics: from cultural context to embedded practice

Connecting students’ cultural and community mathematical practices to school mathematics is a critical issue in mathematics education. The goal of the study was to identify how teachers incorporate children’s cultural and out-of-school mathematics in instruction. Four related practices were identified, and three drew on children’s cultural or out-of-school experiences: (a) using these experiences as contexts for problems, (b) linking these experiences to school mathematics, and (c) identifying embedded mathematical practices prominent in these experiences. A fourth category, teacher initiated situated settings, focused on shared experiences using the classroom as a site of culture. Findings suggest that these practices represent varying levels of complexity and that use of this framework might support teachers in better relating students’ cultural and out-of-school experiences to mathematics.     

How epistemic reflexivity enables teacher educators’ teaching for diversity: Exploring a pedagogical framework for critical thinking

Recent research points to the importance of teacher educators teaching for diversity in initial teacher education programmes. Teaching for diversity is an approach to teacher education in which an understanding of specialist literature and a focus on critical thinking supports a social justice agenda as opposed to merely using different tips and tricks to prepare future teachers for teaching diverse learners in the classroom. In this study, we explored how Australian and New Zealand teacher educators negotiated a social justice agenda in teacher education programmes, using a new transdisciplinary framework of epistemic reflexivity. The Epistemic Reflexivity for Teacher Education (ER-TED) framework draws on epistemic cognition (Clark Chinn’s Aims, Ideals, Reliable epistemic processes – AIR – framework) and Margaret Archer’s reflexivity to explore knowledge claims in teacher educators’ pedagogical decision-making. The findings identified how teacher educators in our study discerned and deliberated with respect to epistemic aims for justification, which involve transformative critical thinking and critical thinking for self. They reported good knowledge (ideals) as being scholarly in nature, and reliable epistemic processes based on higher-order thinking (analysis and evaluating competing ideas) or engaging with multiple perspectives. The teacher educators in our study are clear examples of how strong overall evaluative epistemic stances enable teaching for social justice. We argue that the ER-TED framework can help us as a profession to address teaching for diversity in teacher education programmes based on the belief that the pursuit of social justice requires an evaluativist epistemic stance.