Racial experiences influence us as teachers: Implications for gifted education curriculum development and implementation

As African American faculty members, the authors share one narrative from their collective experiences to elucidate how race manifests itself in lived experiences and, thus, curriculum development and implementation. In sharing their experiences and telling this story, the authors make the cogent point that race dces matter (C. West, 1993) in curriculum development and implementation. Because the authors believe that race matters in the curriculum, they challenge gifted education professionals to move beyond colorblindness (D. Y. Ford, J. J. Harris III, C. A. Tyson, & M. Frazier Trotman, 2002; D. Y. Ford, J. L. Moore III, & H. R. Milner, 2004), to think seriously about their own racial experiences, and to think about the racial experiences of their students in developing and implementing curricula. The authors urge and challenge all education professionals to consider how race penetrates the curriculum in a number of ways and what the implications may mean for all students. The authors do not stop at putting out a call for action; in this article, they share a personal, race‐central story, and connect that story to curriculum development and implementation. The authors conclude the article with a discussion of strategies for educators to consider and, ideally, adopt when developing and implementing curricula.     

A Tribute to Richard Paul

Recent research on the brain and how it functions indicate that education methodologies can be altered to expand a student's intellectual capacity.     

Juxtapositioning Geriatrics and Art: The Essence of Caring,Carer, and Cared-for in Films

The need to revolutionize geriatric nursing is dawning. However, there is a negative view regarding this nursing field. The dearth of literature on the use of theatrical films to surface universal realities in a care-driven profession has led to this attempt of bringing to reality the essences of caring, carer, and cared-for and their interactions with each other. This paper presents an innovation of selecting a film (Away From Her) to surface the essences, or lebenswelt, of three universal realities: caring, carer, and cared-for. Content analysis and appreciative inquiry were utilized to achieve the objectives of this study. This bold attempt to tap the field of art, particularly films, has led to the genesis of three themes that resulted from the interaction of the objects under study. The C³ (Carer-Caring-Cared-for) Interaction Model crystallizes the nexus between and among living, learning, and loving in geriatric practice.     

Using an adaptive expertise lens to understand the quality of teachers’ classroom implementation of computer-supported complex systems curricula in high school science

Background: This exploratory study is part of a larger-scale research project aimed at building theoretical and practical knowledge of complex systems in students and teachers with the goal of improving high school biology learning through professional development and a classroom intervention.

Purpose: We propose a model of adaptive expertise to better understand teachers’ classroom practices as they attempt to navigate myriad variables in the implementation of biology units that include working with computer simulations, and learning about and teaching through complex systems ideas.

Sample: Research participants were three high school biology teachers, two females and one male, ranging in teaching experience from six to 16 years. Their teaching contexts also ranged in student achievement from 14–47% advanced science proficiency.

Design and methods: We used a holistic multiple case study methodology and collected data during the 2011–2012 school year. Data sources include classroom observations, teacher and student surveys, and interviews. Data analyses and trustworthiness measures were conducted through qualitative mining of data sources and triangulation of findings.

Results: We illustrate the characteristics of adaptive expertise of more or less successful teaching and learning when implementing complex systems curricula. We also demonstrate differences between case study teachers in terms of particular variables associated with adaptive expertise.

Conclusions: This research contributes to scholarship on practices and professional development needed to better support teachers to teach through a complex systems pedagogical and curricular approach.     

The political is personal: reflections on facilitating action research in gender issues in science education

Action research is emerging as a promising means of promoting individual and societal change in the context of university programmes in teacher education. However, significant gaps exist in the literature regarding the use of action research groups for the education of science teachers. Therefore, an action research group, dealing with gender issues in science education, was established within the context of a graduate course in action research at OISE/UT. The group met 14 times from September of 1992 until May 1993, and consisted of the author and five other science teachers from the Toronto area. Two of us were in the primary panel, two in the intermediate panel and two in the tertiary panel. Five teachers are female and one male. The experiences of the group form the basis of this study. A methodology of participant observation supported by interviews, classroom visits, journals, group feedback and participant portfolios provided a means of examining our experiences from the perspectives of the participants in the group. This case study examines the development of the author as a participant, researcher and facilitator of action research through a critical examination of group dynamics and power issues arising within the action research group. The results of this study confirm that facilitators should undertake their own action research within the context of their groups in order to examine their own taken-for-granted assumptions about teaching and learning. Through such reflections, we will continue to problematise the social and political aspects of science education, and make explicit how the political is personal for each of us as science educators.     

Examining practicing teachers’ perceptions of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) pathways: a structural equation modeling approach

The seven constructs of the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework has been widely adopted as a theoretical basis for understanding the scope of teachers’ information and communication technology (ICT) expertise. Despite this, very little is understood about the inter-relationships between these constructs, especially how these relationships are related to teachers’ TPACK. As a result, the theory–practice nexus of this framework remains weak. In this study, a structural equation model based on Mishra and Koehler’s TPACK framework was developed to describe the TPACK perceptions of 455 practicing teachers in Singapore. The study shows that teachers, perceived TPACK to be formulated from the direct effects of technological knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. They also perceived these knowledge sources to contribute to the development of technological pedagogical knowledge and technological content knowledge, which also contributed to their TPACK. In these teachers’ conceptions of TPACK, however, the effects of content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge were not evident. The implications of these relationships to the design of teacher professional development in ICT are discussed.     

The Pneumatic Common: Learning in,with and from the air

Air is an immersive substance that envelopes us and binds us together, yet it has dominantly been taken for granted and left out of educational and other theorizations. This article develops a conceptualization of the pneumatic common in order to address this gap. The specific intervention staged is within recent educational literature on the common by Noah De Lissovoy, Tyson E. Lewis, and Alexander Means. This literature is surveyed and analyzed in relation to educational theory, curriculum, pedagogy, and policy. Claiming that the air is a central feature of and paradigm for the common, I then concentrate on making the air conditions of the educational common explicit. I do this through a theoretical, historical, and sociological reading of air conditioning. While this explicitation is itself educational, I return to the educational common at the end of the article to ask how and what we can learn in, with, and from the air.