An exploration of educative praxis: Reflections on Marx’s concept praxis,informed by the Lacanian concepts act and event

This article explores an aspect of Karl Marx’s concept, praxis. Praxis is meaningful work, through which we fulfil ourselves by fulfilling others. The discussion draws on the author’s work with postgraduate student teachers, where both students and author were researching their own practice. Reflecting Marx’s conception of praxis as subjective fulfilment in the objective world, this activity was intended to trouble and complicate the categories ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’, whilst enabling students to become both more autonomous and other-oriented. The intention behind this article is to develop the theoretical vocabulary of praxis available to educational researchers and practitioners. Some ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis are introduced, followed by extensive discussion of Slavoj ?i?ek’s concepts, ‘act’ and ‘event’. The key argument is that in a nascent educative praxis, ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ perspectives can be understood not as fixed points of reference, but as dual orientations on a flow of signification. These ideas are developed alongside detailed examination of two university-based research sessions with student teachers. With reference to session activities, a rationale is provided for an emerging educative praxis, in which students explore creative tensions between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ perspectives on school-based practice.     

Fire play: ICCARUS—Intelligent command and control,acquisition and review using simulation*

Is it possible to educate a fire officer to deal intelligently with the command and control of a major fire event he will never have experienced? The authors of this paper believe there is, and present here just one solution to this training challenge. It involves the development of an intelligent simulation based upon computer managed interactive media. The expertise and content underpinning this educational development was provided by the West Midlands Fire Service. Their brief for this training programme was unambiguous and to the point:

• 1 Do not present the trainee with a model answer, because there are no generic fires. Each incident is novel, complex, and often ‘wicked’ in that it changes obstructively as it progresses. Thus firefighting demands that Commanders impose their individual intelligence on each problem to solve it.
• 2 A suitable Educational Simulator should stand alone; operate in real time; emulate as nearly as possible the ‘feel’ of the fireground; present realistic fire progress; incorporate the vast majority of those resources normally present at a real incident; bombard the trainee with information from those sources; provide as few system‐prompts as possible.
• 3 There should also be an interrogable visual debrief which can be used after the exercise to give the trainees a firm understanding of the effects of their actions. This allows them to draw their own conclusions of their command effectiveness. Additionally, such a record of command and control will be an ideal initiator of tutorial discussion.
• 4 The simulation should be realisable on a hardware/software platform of £10 000.
• 5 The overriding importance is that the simulation should ‘emulate as nearly as possible the feelings and stresses of the command role’.

     

Thinking with certainty or with doubt: a Lacanian theorisation of discursive knowledge in teacher education

ABSTRACT

The paper presents a theorisation of pedagogic knowledge formation, as a continuous attempt to understand the positions in discourse we occupy. The paper documents some participatory practitioner research by teacher educators centred on a course development initiative for student teachers of English, at an English university. Students researched their experiences of becoming a teacher within a course that was largely school-based, whilst their tutors researched their own involvement in the process (the main focus of this paper). Drawing on Lacanian theory, tutors are depicted as learning subjects having more or less certainty or doubt about the knowledge they possess. In attempting to understand this interplay of certainty and doubt, tutors arrive at stronger conceptualisations of learning. Through this approach, the paper provides a theoretically informed conception of professional knowledge, as involving a process of renewing ideas about learning, in meeting or resisting external demands.     

Implementing the Contract: the technical and vocational education initiative

Participating schools have a contractual responsibility to recruit a ‘balanced intake’ of students to TVEI courses. However, in many schools it is form teachers who have the eventual job of promoting TVEI to both sexes ‘across the ability range’.

What this recruitment structure does not allow for is that form teachers may be affected by a number of ‘sources of influence’, the effects of which do not coincide with this objective.

The aim of this paper is to build up a picture of the school as an ‘open ended’ interrelating totality, within which form teachers confront the demand for a ‘balanced intake’ alongside a number of other, potentially conflicting factors.     

A summer program designed to educate college students for careers in bioinformatics

A summer program was created for undergraduates and graduate students that teaches bioinformatics concepts, offers skills in professional development, and provides research opportunities in academic and industrial institutions. We estimate that 34 of 38 graduates (89%) are in a career trajectory that will use bioinformatics. Evidence from open-ended research mentor and student survey responses, student exit interview responses, and research mentor exit interview/survey responses identified skills and knowledge from the fields of computer science, biology, and mathematics that are critical for students considering bioinformatics research. Programming knowledge and general computer skills were essential to success on bioinformatics research projects. General mathematics skills obtained through current undergraduate natural sciences programs were adequate for the research projects, although knowledge of probability and statistics should be strengthened. Biology knowledge obtained through the didactic phase of the program and prior undergraduate education was adequate, but advanced or specific knowledge could help students progress on research projects. The curriculum and assessment instruments developed for this program are available for adoption by other bioinformatics programs at http://www.calstatela.edu/SoCalBSI.     

Toward a resolution of inconsistencies in the phonological deficit theory of reading disorders: phonological reading difficulties are more severe in high-IQ poor readers

This study examined whether high- and low-IQ poor readers differed in patterns of reading performance. Ten-year-old poor readers with IQ scores of 110 and higher showed difficulty in taking a phonological approach to reading, failing to show an advantage in reading high-frequency regular versus irregular words and showing impaired nonword reading accuracy for their reading age. However, poor readers with IQ scores of 90 and below showed a more phonological approach to reading, with better reading of regular than irregular words of both high and low frequency, and with nonword reading skills slower than, but as accurate as, those of reading-age controls. We concluded that the high-IQ poor readers experienced difficulty in taking a phonological approach to reading, whereas the low-IQ poor readers had much less marked phonological problems, supporting Stanovich's phonological-core variable-difference model.