Constructing an Inquiry Orientation from a Learning Theory Perspective: Democratizing Access through Task Design

Abstract

It is widely accepted in the mathematics education community that pedagogies oriented toward inquiry are aligned with a constructivist theory of learning, and that these pedagogies effectively support students’ learning of mathematics. In order to promote such an orientation, we first separate the idea of inquiry from its conception as a collection of methods. Then, by grounding those methods in a generally accepted theory of learning, we construct an inquiry-oriented pedagogy from a constructivist perspective. We then discuss the implications of this pedagogy for the design of mathematical tasks that democratize student access to inquiry. This work has implications for educators who wish to enact an inquiry-oriented pedagogy in their classroom in order to support their students’ problem solving and problem posing.     

The global education practicum: perspectives from accompanying academics

The benefits of international education experiences for students are well documented. The effect on the individual of international experiences has been researched and theorised by authors for at least the last 20 years. In this paper the experiences of three academics who accompanied pre-service teachers on a 3 week international practicum are examined through the prism of intercultural confidence and competence. Accompanying academic Juliet reflects on dealing with the added difficulties the pre-service teachers encountered as a result of their inexperience in classroom settings. Accompanying academic Paula reflects on the challenges of “teaching-out-of-field.” Accompanying academic Sue reflects on the social and transitional challenges experienced when supporting pre-service teachers who collectively had issues related to health, safety, and interpersonal relationships. These lived experiences provide a richer understanding of the role of international partnerships in contributing to academic growth and increasing intercultural competency in tandem with their students.     

The role of vocabulary versus knowledge in children’s language learning: a fifty-year perspective / El papel del vocabulario frente al conocimiento en el aprendizaje lingüístico de los niños: una perspectiva de cincuenta años

Much public attention has been drawn to the ‘30 million-word gap’ between children growing up in more vs. less privileged families. I argue in this paper that conceptualizing the gap in quantity of words, which is useful in emphasizing the size of the challenge, misconceptualizes the real differences, which are in knowledge of the world rather than just vocabulary size, and risks luring early childhood educators and parents into overly simple solutions. If we recognize the challenge as one of knowledge rather than just vocabulary size, we also are in a better position to support second language learners whose knowledge base across both languages is a better predictor of academic success than vocabulary in the second language.     

Development and testing of an antitobacco school-based curriculum for deaf and hard of hearing youth

A tobacco use prevention curriculum tailored for deaf/hard of hearing youth was tested using a quasi-experimental design. Two schools for the deaf received the curriculum; two served as noncurriculum controls. Surveys assessed changes in tobacco use, tobacco education exposure, and tobacco-related attitudes and knowledge among students in grades 7-12 over 3 school years (n = 511-616). Current (past month) smoking decreased significantly at one intervention school (23% to 8%,p = .007), and current smokeless tobacco use at the other (7.5% to 2.5%, p = .03). Tobacco education exposure and antitobacco attitudes and knowledge increased significantly at one or both intervention schools. At one control school, reported tobacco education exposure decreased (p < .001) and antitobacco attitudes increased (p = .01). The results indicate that the curriculum increased perceived tobacco education exposure and significantly affected tobacco-related practices, attitudes, and knowledge.     

Transition from crawling to walking and infants' actions with objects and people

Associations between infants' transition to walking and object activities were examined. Fifty infants were observed longitudinally during home observations. At 11 months, all infants were crawlers; at 13 months, half became walkers. Over age, infants increased their total time with objects and frequency of sharing objects with mothers. Bidirectional influences between locomotion and object actions were found. Walking was associated with new forms of object behaviors: Walkers accessed distant objects, carried objects, and approached mothers to share objects; crawlers preferred objects close at hand and shared objects while remaining stationary. Earlier object activities predicted walking status: Crawlers who accessed distant objects, carried objects, and shared objects over distances at 11 months were more likely to walk by 13 months.     

Trajectories of the home learning environment across the first 5 years: associations with children's vocabulary and literacy skills at prekindergarten

Children's home learning environments were examined in a low-income sample of 1,852 children and families when children were 15, 25, 37, and 63 months. During home visits, children's participation in literacy activities, the quality of mothers' engagements with their children, and the availability of learning materials were assessed, yielding a total learning environment score at each age. At 63 months, children's vocabulary and literacy skills were assessed. Six learning environment trajectories were identified, including environments that were consistently low, environments that were consistently high, and environments characterized by varying patterns of change. The skills of children at the extremes of learning environment trajectories differed by more than 1 SD and the timing of learning experiences related to specific emerging skills.     

Coteaching and Disturbances: Building a Better System for Learning to Teach Science

Science education research has examined the benefits of coteaching for learning to teach in elementary and secondary school contexts where coteachers bring variable levels of experience to the work of coteaching. Coteaching as a pedagogical strategy is being implemented at the university level but with limited research. Drawing from the field of activity theory and our emic experience as coteachers, we examine the enactment of coteaching in university science education courses. One of the tools central to our examination of coteaching included the analysis of disturbances in the work and object of preparing science teachers. This analysis highlighted the role, during discursive interactions, of problem posing and problem solving for addressing observed disturbances. The presence of an extra instructor provided increased opportunities in the system for recognizing and valuing disturbances as indicators of underlying contradictions or tensions in elements of the activity system of the learning and teaching of science teachers. Our analysis suggests that coteaching offers expanded opportunities for the evolution of the activity system of preparing science teachers.     

Inequalities and crossings: Literacy and the spaces-in-between

Debates on literacy inequalities have been powerfully advanced through Jan Blommaert's work, which demonstrates the ways in which discourse forms can lose function as they are moved into different environments. Looking through a south-north lens, Blommaert maps this feature of loss of function against world wide inequalities conceptualised through the centre-periphery models outlined in world systems theory. This paper presents work that I have done over a number of years on the concept of recontextualisation, examining at a micro-level (rather than a transnational level) examples of everyday print and digital texts which people produce and interpret as part of processes in workplaces and development projects in New Zealand and South Africa. The research then explores what happens to the fit between form and function when these particular texts are projected across contexts in the sequences of events necessary to ‘make things happen’. I explore the implications of this shift in terms of the unit of analysis, questioning how the concepts of literacy events and practices, so central to the New Literacy Studies (NLS), can account for such shifting. I identify the resources that actors have access to and draw on in each event in these sequences, and in their ability to project beyond the local, looking more closely at the materiality of literacy. As people and/or their texts are recontextualised as part of such meaning-making trajectories, time and space become important dimensions of analysis: I explore the levels at which time and space can be analysed in these crossings, treating these levels as forms of scaling. The multi-sited, micro-ethnographic work involved in tracing these trajectories shows that function can be lost, but it can also be sustained and/or gained. The paper suggests that a shift is needed from the focus (evident in much research and teaching in language and literacy studies) on the production and interpretation of meanings within contexts towards a focus on the projection of meanings across contexts. This shift of focus can contribute to new understandings of the placedness of resources for meaning making, the notion of capabilities and the understanding of literacy inequalities.     

Distal Communication by Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Evidence for Common Ground?

van der Goot et al. (2014) proposed that distal, deictic communication indexed the appreciation of the psychological state of a common ground between a signaler and a receiver. In their study, great apes did not signal distally, which they construed as evidence for the human uniqueness of a sense of common ground. This study exposed 166 chimpanzees to food and an experimenter, at an angular displacement, to ask, “Do chimpanzees display distal communication?” Apes were categorized as (a) proximal or (b) distal signalers on each of four trials. The number of chimpanzees who communicated proximally did not statistically differ from the number who signaled distally. Therefore, contrary to the claim by van der Goot et al., apes do communicate distally.