Rethinking resources and hybridity

This review explores Alfred Schademan??s ??What does playing cards have to do with science? A resource-rich view of African American young men?? by examining how he uses two key concepts??hybridity and resources??to propose an approach to science education that counters enduring deficit notions associated with this population. Our response to Schademan??s work expands upon his definition of hybridity and its purpose in the science classroom and highlights the tensions inherent in the appropriation of student resources in classroom spaces. This conversation points also to the need for research analyses and pedagogical approaches that simultaneously valorize student resources, allow student opportunities to learn the dominant codes, and provide teacher and student opportunities to transform them. Carol Lee??s notion of ??cultural modeling?? is discussed as a possible framing device to facilitate this kind of research.     

The Challenges of Defining and Measuring Student Engagement in Science

Engagement is one of the hottest research topics in the field of educational psychology. Research shows that multifarious benefits occur when students are engaged in their own learning, including increased motivation and achievement. However, there is little agreement on a concrete definition and effective measurement of engagement. This special issue serves to discuss and work toward addressing conceptual and instrumentation issues related to engagement, with particular interest in engagement in the domain of science learning. We start by describing the dimensional perspective of engagement (behavioral, cognitive, emotional, agentic) and suggest a complementary approach that places engagement instrumentation on a continuum. Specifically, we recommend that instrumentation be considered on a “grain-size” continuum that ranges from a person-centered to a context-centered orientation to clarify measurement issues. We then provide a synopsis of the articles included in this special issue and conclude with suggestions for future research.     

Teaching at Master's level: between a rock and a hard place

The considerable focus on capturing the ‘student experience’ has not been matched by investigations into the views and experiences of those teaching and managing programmes. This study aims to contribute to redressing the balance. An online survey of staff responsible for Postgraduate Taught (PGT) programmes in the UK elicited 382 responses from staff in 60 different institutions. Findings relating to perceptions of challenges their students face, students’ preparedness for Master's level study and the influence of institutional culture are reported. PGT students were seen as dealing with complexity and juggling multiple demands. A gap between PGT students’ readiness for study at this level, the QAA's vision of Master's study, and institutional assumptions about student support required was identified. For this gap to be closed, we suggest a review of institutional practices is required.     

Alternative Pathways to Traditional Destinations: higher education for disadvantaged Australians

In 1985, the Higher Education Equity Program was introduced by the Australian Government to improve the participation of those persons from social groups traditionally under-represented within higher education. In 1990, the program was incorporated within A Fair Chance For All which provided more specific details of the government's desire for a system-wide approach to equity issues. One result has been the proliferation of access and equity programs conducted by universities around the country and aimed at redressing the disadvantage of potential students. The alleged success of these programs is based on greater participation in and graduation from Australian universities by individuals from targeted disadvantaged groups. The research reported here, however, would suggest that such programs are prone to co-opt the language of equity and social justice, dependent as they are on satisfying statistically-orientated program performance indicators in order to receive recurrent government funding. Further, the paper argues that success in achieving equity within Australian higher education will remain limited unless the structural arrangements that work to construct social inequalities in mainstream higher education are addressed.     

Forced Disruption of Anatomy Education in Australia and New Zealand: An Acute Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

Australian and New Zealand universities commenced a new academic year in February/March 2020 largely with “business as usual.” The subsequent Covid-19 pandemic imposed unexpected disruptions to anatomical educational practice. Rapid change occurred due to government-imposed physical distancing regulations from March 2020 that increasingly restricted anatomy laboratory teaching practices. Anatomy educators in both these countries were mobilized to adjust their teaching approaches. This study on anatomy education disruption at pandemic onset within Australia and New Zealand adopts a social constructivist lens. The research question was “What are the perceived disruptions and changes made to anatomy education in Australia and New Zealand during the initial period of the Covid-19 pandemic, as reflected on by anatomy educators?.” Thematic analysis to elucidate “the what and why” of anatomy education was applied to these reflections. About 18 anatomy academics from ten institutions participated in this exercise. The analysis revealed loss of integrated “hands-on” experiences, and impacts on workload, traditional roles, students, pedagogy, and anatomists' personal educational philosophies. The key opportunities recognized for anatomy education included: enabling synchronous teaching across remote sites, expanding offerings into the remote learning space, and embracing new pedagogies. In managing anatomy education's transition in response to the pandemic, six critical elements were identified: community care, clear communications, clarified expectations, constructive alignment, community of practice, ability to compromise, and adapt and continuity planning. There is no doubt that anatomy education has stepped into a yet unknown future in the island countries of Australia and New Zealand.     

Educating science teachers for the sociocultural diversity of urban schools

This interpretive study of the preparation of science teachers for urban high schools explored the extent to which learning to teach was facilitated by the methods courses, cooperating teachers and university supervisors. Because the methods course was minimally effective in addressing the needs of teaching low track students from conditions of poverty the methods instructor, Tobin, decided to be a teacher-researcher with such students. He joined Smith, a student teacher and Seiler, a doctoral student, in an investigation that examined learning to teach in a graduate teacher preparation program. In an endeavour to gain a first hand grasp on the challenges of teaching African American students placed in a low track program of study the three authors of this paper co-taught science in an urban high school. The paper incorporates rich perspectives gained from the teacher-researchers and theoretical frameworks associated with resistance, habitus and learning to teach by co-teaching. The paper advocates co-teaching as an essential component of teacher education programs.     

Writing to it: creative engagements with writing practice in and with the not yet known in today’s academy

We have developed an approach to collaborative-writing-as-inquiry that we sometimes refer to as ‘between the twos’. Increasingly, we came to understand that the only way to continue in our process was to ‘write to it’; whatever the question, the query or the problem, it was this inducement – ‘write to it’ – that led to new experimentations and the indeterminate rhythms and refrains of the multiple that were often present in the agonistics of our practice. This is how we have been living intra-actively with desire within and against the traditional representations of research and pedagogic practice in higher education in recent years. In offering opportunities for bringing non-totalising modes of sensing to life within Deleuze and Guattari’s experimental and creative originations, and in the multiplicity and the vibrant potentialities of always becoming, we make claims for new, creatively productive writing practices in the university of the future.     

‘We learnt that last week’: reading into the language practices of teachers

The messages teachers convey to their students through their use of language can often go unconsidered, yet such practices can have a significant impact on students and their schooling, and in the creation of learning difficulties. In this paper we employ a discursive and ideological approach to analysing teachers’ language practices and suggest that such systematic examination is warranted given the centrality of ‘teacher talk’ to students’ schooling. We draw attention to these concerns through an analysis of a spoken text between a teacher and student in the context of ‘show and tell’; a dialogue drawn from a larger body of data of interviews with and observations of teachers in six Australian primary schools. The analysis attempts to uncover the meanings conveyed to the student in question, Sam, through his teacher’s language practices and to demonstrate the potentially detrimental effects of these practices on his schooling. Generally, we propose that teachers frequently employ linguistic techniques to refashion students in various ways, according to the norms of schooling; norms that often do not account very well for student difference and which position them as ‘difficult’. Specifically, we argue that Sam’s teacher seems more interested in moulding Sam’s behaviour to conform to the interests of the school than in valuing his heritage and contributions.     

Locked out: researching destinations and outcomes for pupils excluded from special schools and Pupil Referral Units

This article explores the methodological challenges encountered during a study of destinations and outcomes for pupils permanently excluded from Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) and special schools in England. It outlines the manner in which the key phrases and assumptions embedded within the specification, terms such as routes and trajectories, destinations and outcomes, framed the study – and to some extent the researchers. The article is located within a growing body of scholarly activity that has raised important questions about the epistemological bases of educational research, the representation of complex social realities and methodological issues relating to the identification and tracking of ‘hard to find’ young people. The authors conclude that their apparent inability to find the answers to some rather straightforward questions is in fact data rather than lack of data.     

College Students’ Perceptions About the Plausibility of Human-Induced Climate Change

Overcoming students’ misconceptions may be a challenge when teaching about phenomena such as climate change. Students tend to cite short-term weather effects as evidence to support or refute long-term climate transformations, which displays a fundamental misunderstanding about weather and climate distinctions. Confusion about weather and climate may also reflect student misunderstanding about deep time, a concept that spans several scientific content areas. This study examines the relationships between students’ understanding of deep time and their understandings of the distinctions between weather and climate, as well as how these understandings influence students’ perceptions about the plausibility of human-induced global climate change. Undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory science class on global climate change completed measures of their (a) understanding of distinctions between weather and climate, (b) knowledge of deep time, and (c) plausibility perceptions of human-induced climate change, both at the beginning and end of the course. The study includes comparison groups of similar students enrolled in introductory physical geography classes. Results revealed that greater knowledge of deep time and increased plausibility perceptions of human-induced climate change provide significant explanation of variance in students’ understanding of weather and climate distinctions. Furthermore, students achieve significantly increased understanding of weather and climate, even with brief instruction.