Structuring Occasions

Within the mathematics education literature, the term constructivism has been subject to a diversity of interpretations, many of which are trivializations of original theoretical work. We suggest that trivialized versions of constructivism continue to be promulgated due, in large part,to misunderstandings of some of the vocabulary adopted by its advocates. This situation has been the source of considerable frustration in our ongoing efforts to communicate the insights and implications of radical and social constructivist theories to preservice and practicing teachers. We discuss some of the specifics of these frustrations along with strategies intended to flag and circumvent them in our work with teachers. The writing is structured around a set of recursively elaborated interpretations of a classroom episode. Developed around varied understandings of the terms structure and construct, these interpretations are intended to show how we have worked with teachers to foster a deep appreciation of how learning might be reframed as dependent on, rather than determined by, teaching.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Head Start and child care providers’ motivators,barriers and facilitators to practicing family-style meal service

This paper presents a qualitative investigation of the motivators, barriers, and facilitators for practicing family-style meal service (FSMS) from the perspective of 18 child care providers serving preschool children in Head Start (HS), Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) funded, and non-CACFP child-care centers. Providers were selected based on maximum variation purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews were conducted until saturation was reached. Provider responses were systematically coded using thematic analysis. HS and CACFP providers reported being motivated to practice FSMS because it created pleasant mealtimes, opportunities to role model healthy eating, and healthful child development. CACFP and non-CACFP providers reported not using FSMS because it was resource intensive, messy, and seemed to violate CACFP policy. HS and CACFP providers offered suggestions to overcome these barriers. They suggested that FSMS eventually becomes easier with practice, children can self-regulate their energy intake, and teaching children self-help skills during play time can avoid messes during mealtimes. Findings from this study have implications for programming, policy, and research.     

Profound understanding of emergent mathematics: broadening the construct of teachers’ disciplinary knowledge

We discuss the teachers’ disciplinary knowledge of mathematics in this article, arguing two main points as we report on a 2-year study involving 22 practicing teachers. First we argue that teachers’ knowledge of mathematics might be productively construed as a complex evolving form, a significant dimension of which is tacit knowledge. Second, based on our first point, we suggest that this knowledge is better understood as a learnable disposition than a domain to be mastered.     

“What Say these Young Ones”: Students’ Responses to Shakespeare—An Icon of Englishness

Challenging the taken-for-granted status of canonical authors, especially Shakespeare, is difficult, but not impossible. This research offers a glimpse into the inferential processes of a group of grade ten students from diverse backgrounds who read unfamiliar passages from Shakespeare. The findings reveal a complex picture of meaning-making, involving a variety of factors that play role in the students’ reading comprehension. The most crucial insight is the finding that subjective interpretations seem to hinder independent understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare’s texts beyond the literal level. Our research, conducted in a large, urban, culturally-diverse high school in Western Canada, shows that students tend to rely on uncritically absorbed bits and pieces of background information or popular culture references, as well as overgeneralized understanding of previously read Shakespearean texts, to form opinions about the author, which often carve an interpretive lens, colouring the reconstruction of the characters’ experiences in subsequent encounters with his works. The study juxtaposes actual experiences of students reading Shakespeare to culturally endorsed attitudes informing curriculum decisions and policies, as well as prevalent teaching practices in the high school classroom. Finally, it asks if teachers need to look at personal connections not as a strategy that leads to an analytic engagement, but as a form of analytic engagement, affirming that critical reflection is a competence that requires careful nurturing and guidance.     

Prompting teachers’ constructive reflection: pupils’ questions as critical incidents

Constructive reflection is seen as an important ingredient in the professional development of teachers, in order to stimulate significant change in approaches to classroom practice and the general provision of science education in schools. This paper explores the use of pupils’ questions in provoking ‘critical incidents’ in the professional lives of teachers. It is suggested that pupils’ questions can be both indicative of their own conceptual change as well as being sophisticated prompts for teachers to examine their own thinking. Case studies of two teachers ‐‐ one primary and one secondary ‐‐ are used to illuminate how such critical incidents can lead to changes in teacher thinking, resulting then in changes in classroom practice in science. Suggestions are made for the use of pupils’ questions as critical incidents in the professional development of teachers.     

School Governors—an effective management force or another bureaucratic layer of school management?

This paper reviews the pattern and organisation of governors' meetings and their effectiveness for managing the new environment established by the 1988 Education Reform Act. It suggests that the move towards a sub‐committee structure may be counter‐productive in educational terms. A different approach is put forward which may be more appropriate for primary and most secondary governing bodies. The paper goes on to suggest a training strategy which facilitates the team approach that it is necessary for the partners in the process, i.e. governors, head and officers/advisers, to adopt. This draws heavily on the training approach adopted in Leicestershire.     

After this nothing happened

In response to Michiel van Eijck and Wolff-Michael Roth’s article and Michael Mueller and Deborah Tippin’s rejoinder, we explore traditional ecological knowledges as science education. Adopting a stance of situated partial perspectives, and drawing on selected literature in science and technology studies and feminist postcolonial theories, we reflect on acts of dissociation, localism, utilitarianism and principled pluralism as referent points for epistemological and pedagogical renewal. In conclusion, we return to an opening narrative of cultural loss combined with an invitation to imagine science pedagogy as a site of possibility, vulnerability and fragility. Such an invitation, we suggest, involves troubling manifestations of pedagogical and epistemic desires of normative closures and certitude. What now remains is a series of tensions and open questions for further work.     

Substrate oxidation during incremental arm and leg exercise in men and women matched for ventilatory threshold

The aim of this study was to determine the variations in substrate utilization between men and women matched for ventilatory threshold (Tvent) during incremental arm cranking and leg cycling exercise at 70, 85, 100 and 115% of the mode-specific Tvent. Recreationally active men (n=12) and women (n=10) with similar values for percentage of peak oxygen consumption at Tvent participated in the study. Ventilatory equivalence, excess CO2 and modified V-slope methods were used concurrently to determine Tvent. The participants performed 5 min of exercise at each of 70, 85, 100 and 115% Tvent during both arm cranking and leg cycling exercise. The females were tested during the early follicular phase for all trials. A two-way mixed-design analysis of variance was performed to test for differences between the sexes. When carbohydrate and fat oxidation were expressed relative to total fat-free mass, carbohydrate oxidation during arm cranking and leg cycling was significantly higher in men than women at each percentage of Tvent. In contrast, women showed significantly higher fat oxidation across intensities during both arm cranking and leg cycling. Our results suggest that when substrate utilization is expressed relative to total fat-free mass, women appear to maintain a higher rate of fat and lower rate of carbohydrate oxidation than men during both incremental arm cranking and leg cycling exercise relative to Tvent.