Embodied encounters with more-than-human nature in health and physical education

ABSTRACT

Despite the importance of interactions with natural environments for personal and social well-being, there is only limited evidence of the relationship between the environment and health as an idea or area of study in school education in Australia. Logically, the place for such a study, at least in Australia, would be within the Health & Physical Education (HPE) key learning area. However, in HPE, alternative ways of considering health beyond the dominant ‘healthism’ discourses which privilege physical activity, fitness, food and nutrition struggle for any kind of existence. Gruenewald (2004. A Foucauldian analysis of environmental education: Toward the socioecological challenge of the earth charter. Curriculum Inquiry, 34(1), 71–107) suggests looking to the margins of a field to see what knowledge is silenced or subjugated in order to open up new conditions of possibility. This challenged us to look beyond taken for granted ways of thinking about health to identify other resources, perhaps unrecognised as yet, that teachers might draw on to constitute their knowledge of health. To do this, we look to interview data collected when teachers were asked to talk about their personal experiences of the relationship between the environment and health. The analysis of the interviews demonstrated how the teachers conceptualised the relationship between the environment and health by drawing on embodied experiences and affective encounters with more-than-human nature. By theorising these encounters through a post-human, new-materialist lens, we demonstrate how their corporeal knowledge, developed through embodied experiences, has the potential to assist teachers in formulating less institutionalised health understandings. We argue that these encounters with more-than-human nature can serve as alternatives to those dominant healthism discourses that invoke problematic risk, fear and crisis responses.     

Socially facilitated drinking behavior in chicks (Gallus domesticus): Relative effects of drive and stimulus mechanisms

The drinking behavior of individual chicks (n = 168) was studied in two discrimination situations when the individual was alone or with an audience of merely present (not drinking) or coacting (drinking) conspecifics. In one discrimination task, a familiar and an unfamiliar drinking tube (FU) were presented simultaneously; in the other discrimination task, two unfamiliar tubes (UU) were presented. The coacting audience received a familiar and an unfamiliar tube; their familiar tube was always unfamiliar to the subject. Subjects drank more when conspecifics were present, intake being highest in the presence of coacting conspecifics. Intake was higher in the FU discrimination than in UU. However, in the UU discrimination, individuals that were tested with coactors drank most of their total intake from the tube that was similar to the coactors’ familiar tube. In the FU task, individual subjects drank mostly from their familiar tube in each social condition. However, this effect was smaller for those tested with coacting conspecifics than for those tested with merely present conspecifics.     

Green beans: Gardening with two's

The nearby neighborhood garden project provided an almost daily trip for our group of two-year-olds. There we discovered limitless opportunities for learning. Gardening provided a sense of continuity that is hard to achieve with young ones.Karen Hack is the Early Childhood Special Education Teacher of the two's group at the Infant Care Center. Virginia Flynn was the Administrative Supervisor of the Infant Care Center and is currently Assistant Education Director of the Infant Health and Development Program, The New York League for Early Learning, Inc.     

Where in the World do Children Learn 'Bloody Revenge'?: Cults of terror and counter-terror and their implications for child socialisation

This paper elaborates some of the critical dimensions for understanding the emergence and maintenance of conflict-based solidarities worldwide and their implications for child and youth socialisation for violence and aggression. The paper in particular addresses some of the ways in which we might understand the global/local dynamics influencing the ways and degrees to which children around the world learn bloody revenge. The author proposes that the global-local dimensions of learning bloody revenge require that we understand the following: (1) the role that culture and psychology play in learning bloody revenge; (2) the ways in which the socialisation context created by terror makes making up so hard to do; and (3) the persistent and global link between all forms of violence and prevailing conceptions of masculinity. The author draws upon US responses to the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center to illustrate some key propositions.     

Assessing the Implicit Curriculum in Social Work Education: Heterogeneity of Students’ Experiences and Impact on Professional Empowerment

The implicit curriculum, which refers to a student’s learning environment, has been described as an essential feature of an integrated professional social work curriculum. Very little is known, however, about the heterogeneity of students’ experiences with the implicit curriculum, how this heterogeneity may be distributed across groups of students, and how it may impact students’ professional empowerment. This study used latent profile analysis to identify groups of students based on their experiences with the implicit curriculum in school and field contexts, and it examined differences between profile groups on measures of professional empowerment. Study participants (n = 534) were undergraduate and graduate students of a large school of social work in the northeast. Results revealed that four groups of students could be identified based on their experiences with the implicit curriculum: students who experienced (a) positive school and field environments, (b) positive school but negative field environments, (c) negative school but positive field environments, and (d) negative school and field environments. Profile groups differed significantly on measures of professional empowerment. Implications and directions for future work are discussed.     

Training teachers for mainstreaming: An inservice model for developing behavior management skills

Abstract

One purpose in this study was to determine the percentage of subjects from a nationally representative sample of high school seniors who reported intentions to major in education and were actually majoring in education during a 2‐year follow‐up analysis. Results showed less than half the subjects were majoring in education. Moreover, subjects with the poorest high school academic proficiency scores were much less likely to be attending college or majoring in education. A second purpose of this study was to describe high school academic proficiency levels in mathematics, reading, and science among students majoring in education as compared to all other college majors. Results showed high school academic proficiency scores of secondary education majors faired better, overall, than the general 4‐year college population. Conversely, 4‐year college students in elementary and early childhood education were more apt to have left high school with some academic deficiencies, especially in the area of science among early childhood majors.     

Untying a Dreamcatcher: Coming to Understand Possibilities for Teaching Students of Aboriginal Inheritance

Increasing the number of Aboriginal students graduating from university is a goal of many Canadian universities. Realizing this goal may present challenges to the orientation and methodology of university curricula that have been developed without consideration of the traditional epistemologies of Aboriginal peoples. In this article, three scholars in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria take up this issue by dialoguing with each other about the possibilities of incorporating Aboriginal perspectives into their courses. These conversations are woven together into the narrative form of a four-act play in which the authors caricature their personalities to highlight their initial resistances and eventual reconsiderations. As non-Aboriginal instructors from different cultural backgrounds, the authors confront issues of respect, responsibility, and (mis)representation as they struggle with the dilemmas involved in cross-cultural understanding. Through this journey they come to imagine a world where cultural differences, including the traditional epistemologies of Aboriginal peoples, present possibilities for greater understanding of each other and more authentic expressions of our humanity.     

Linguistic capital and the linguistic field for teachers unaccustomed to linguistic difference

Teachers in classrooms throughout England are facing a shifting demographic in their pupil intake. Where the teaching of children whose first language was not English was once considered an inner-city teachers' role, more recent migration patterns have challenged this preconception. In England in particular, this change sits against an historical backdrop of centralised control of the curriculum for English. This article explores how primary school teachers responded to the arrival of Polish children in county settings following EU accession in 2004. Interviews with a small sample of teachers in schools that had previously been mainly monolingual were coded using Bourdieu's Logic of Practice. Analysis revealed a complex mix of experiences that appeared to rest on assumed pedagogical norms and professionally assimilated external pressures. Discussion centres on the author's interpretation of teachers' ownership of linguistic capital and its relationship to the linguistic field.