Young people mobilizing the language of citizenship: struggles for classification and new meaning in an uncertain world

This paper presents research findings from an ethnographic study carried out with 24 low‐income youths (ages 14–16) living on the economic fringes of urban inner‐city Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Our primary aims are: to expose the stratified subcultural articulations of citizenship as they are expressed, through language and symbol, by the young people within our study; and to demonstrate how critiques of (neo‐)liberalism in political thought, when combined with a cultural sociology of youth, might alter our subcultural reading of young people's conceptions of citizenship under the dynamics of radical social change. Our ultimate goal is to develop a more nuanced sociological examination of the ways in which young people deploy and utilize the language of citizenship as part of their own cultural struggles, exacerbated in times of state retrenchment, to classify themselves and others as one method of achieving visibility and legitimacy in urban concentrations of poverty.     

Instructional design for distance learning

An intrinsic link exists between instructional design (ID) and distance learning (DL). Their inextricability in the real world raises specific problems of interest in the field of ID. In no other teaching/learning situation is ID so essential as in DL. The conditions of DL make it a necessity to have long-term instructional planning, cost analysis, curriculum and course development, instructional materials development and maintenance, delivery plans, and detailed evaluation rules. Without all of these components, DL simply could not happen. It took some time for this neccessity to be acknowledged, as can be seen in the history of DL. However, ID becomes even more critical as increasingly costly and complex means are used. Conditions of learning have special features in DL, such as the role of media, since the professor, teacher or instructor is replaced by media for either transmitting information or for organizing learning activities. In this paper, the term distance learning will be used to mean media-based, remote or asynchronous learning supported by an instructional system. This paper introduces general features of DL and examines essential aspects of ID for DL, with special emphasis on ID methodologies and on media selection.     

Measuring Pedagogy and the Integration of Engineering Design in STEM Classrooms

The present study examined changes in high school biology and technology education pedagogy during the first year of a three-year professional development (PD) program using the INSPIRES educative curriculum. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) calls for the integration of science and engineering through inquiry-based pedagogy that shifts the burden of thinking from the teacher to the student. This call is especially challenging for teachers untrained in inquiry teaching and engineering or science concepts. The INSPIRES educative curriculum materials and PD provided a mechanism for teachers to transform their teaching to meet the NGSS challenges. This study followed a longitudinal triangulation mixed methods design. Selected lessons were video recorded, scored on the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) rubric, and examined for qualitative trends. Year 1 results indicated that teachers had begun to transform their teaching and pointed to particular lessons within the INSPIRES curriculum that most facilitated the reform. Instructional practices of participants improved significantly as a result of the INSPIRES PD program and also aligned with previous, similar studies. These findings provide insights for rethinking the structure of professional development, particularly in the integrated use of an educative curriculum aligned with intended professional development goals.