Teaching in the borderland: critical practices in foundations courses

Using first-person accounts of classroom experiences, five professors examine the intersection of social foundations and borderland theory and their efforts to move students through resistance to understanding and affirmation of sociocultural diversity. The authors present this paper in two parts, the first providing examples of using a borderland approach within the classroom and the second providing illustrations moving these borderland strategies beyond the classroom. In each case, authors show the interwoven nature of pedagogy, identity, knowledge, and experience as they work to connect theory and practice. All of the institutions represented have majority white populations, and many do not reflect the diversity of the communities in which they are situated. The need for borderland practices in social foundations courses is urgent in these areas. These pedagogical reflections, although not meant to be recipes for success, provide examples of practices that can serve to meet the growing demands from schools and communities for culturally competent, socially aware teacher–leaders, and reaffirm the critical importance of social foundations in teacher education.     

Private Goods and Public Bads

Abstract

The effectiveness of using the vignette as a research device for determining preservice elementary teachers', African American high school students', and Young Scholars' perceptions of the future was investigated. Similar results were found among groups regarding future transportation, communication, and various labor-saving inventions. Different results were found among groups concerning positive, negative, and uncertain happenings in the future. A large percentage of the negative, positive, and uncertain comments collected from the vignettes of the groups focused on environmental issues in the future. Vignettes of preservice elementary teachers at one of the universities used in the study were, as a whole, more pessimistic than the vignettes submitted by the other groups. Recommendations from the study were to (a) use the device to collect prerequisite knowledge from students prior to instruction about the future, (b) increase the group sizes for data collection, (c) use the device with other data-collecting techniques, and (d) use the device to determine the effectiveness of a curriculum centered on the future.     

“I believe I will go out of this class actually knowing something”: Cooperative learning activities in physical chemistry

The purposes of this study were to describe the structure of events during cooperative learning activities—Friday discussion sessions—in a graduate-level thermodynamics course and to understand what these activities meant to the students. First, we describe the structure of Friday discussion sessions in our classroom, which were used to focus student attention on conceptual issues rather than algorithmic problem solving. Second, we delineate findings which emerge from the perspective of the students. We found that cooperative learning activities move students away from rote learning strategies and toward more meaningful strategies which allowed them to integrate concepts over the entire semester. In addition, we discovered that the sharing of insights and ideas between students leads to the development of interpersonal skills and communication skills which the students perceive as an important component of the Friday discussion sessions. Implications for further classroom use, low-status versus high-status students, and assessment are discussed. J Res Sci Teach 34: 819–835, 1997.     

User studies in archives: the case of the Manhyia Archives of the Institute of African Studies, Kumasi, Ghana

This paper examines the use and users of the records at the Manhyia Archives of the Institute of African Studies, Kumasi. Data for the study were collected from the searcher’s ticket application forms available at the Manhyia Archives. These data collected were analysed using SPSS software. The study revealed that men and Ghanaians visit the archive most frequently. Recommendations include intensification of efforts to promote the existence, availability, and potential use of the records and the need for further research about the use of the records in the future.     

Plants as producers: A case study of elementary science teaching

This case study is part of a larger study of teachers' use of curriculum materials in planning and teaching fifth-grade science. This case study focuses on one of the nine teachers observed teaching an activity-based unit on plant growth and photosynthesis. Although the teacher became aware that her students held certain misconceptions about plant growth, she was unsuccessful in helping them replace their misconceptions with the scientific conceptions she wanted them to learn. The analysis revealed several factors that contributed to this disappointing result. The teacher and the curriculum developers held different views about learning and the nature of science, and several problems surfaced about the content and organization of the teacher's guide.