Accomplishing lessons in postcolonial classrooms: comparative perspectives from Botswana and Brunei Darussalam

Drawing on observations and audio‐recordings of classroom language use in two postcolonial societies, the Republic of Botswana in Africa and the Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam in south‐east Asia, this study seeks to explore how teachers and pupils face the challenge of accomplishing teaching and learning using a language which is not their own. In both Botswana and Brunei Darussalam, English is the official language of instruction for some subjects from mid‐primary school level. Unlike many comparative studies which concentrate on the macro or national level, the focus of this study is the micro‐level of classroom interaction. The study shows that there are both similarities and differences across the two contexts in the ways teachers and pupils engage with language(s) through a range of monolingual and bilingual strategies. In comparing the discourses of primary‐level classrooms in Botswana and Brunei Darussalam, the study demonstrates the tensions in the language policies and practices in the two postcolonial countries. The pressure of globalisation has resulted in the privileging of imported over indigenous languages and the study shows the pragmatic responses of the classroom participants in the two contexts.     

Questioning techniques to promote thinking

Research has shown that children as young as three and four can think on many different levels if they are encouraged to do so (Pepler & Ross, 1981; Turner & Durrett, 1975). Educators can promote young children's thinking by asking appropriate questions and by providing learning activities that require children to think beyond the recall or memorization level (What Works, 1986). Asking good questions is an art — an art that can be learned and refined with practice and with conscious effort.Jean M. Shaw and Mary Jo Puckett Cliatt are associate professors in the School of Education at the University of Mississippi in University, MS.     

Teaching of Mandarin in an English Comprehensive School: A case study

A group of English children in a rural comprehensive are learning Mandarin, taught by a Chinese teacher. This article describes the background to this development and follows three cohorts of students, giving the pupils' views about learning Chinese and why they chose it. As a psychologist who has interests in education and who is also a part-time student of Chinese, the author welcomed the chance to share the pupils' experience. In the final cohort, sensation-seeking tendencies and intellectual achievement responsibility were investigated as personality traits which may influence a child's choice of foreign language study.     

Structuring Occasions

Within the mathematics education literature, the term constructivism has been subject to a diversity of interpretations, many of which are trivializations of original theoretical work. We suggest that trivialized versions of constructivism continue to be promulgated due, in large part,to misunderstandings of some of the vocabulary adopted by its advocates. This situation has been the source of considerable frustration in our ongoing efforts to communicate the insights and implications of radical and social constructivist theories to preservice and practicing teachers. We discuss some of the specifics of these frustrations along with strategies intended to flag and circumvent them in our work with teachers. The writing is structured around a set of recursively elaborated interpretations of a classroom episode. Developed around varied understandings of the terms structure and construct, these interpretations are intended to show how we have worked with teachers to foster a deep appreciation of how learning might be reframed as dependent on, rather than determined by, teaching.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Axioms, Essences, and Mostly Clean Hands: Preparing to Teach Chemistry with Libavius and Aristotle

Andreas Libavius’ (c. 1555–1616) three part collection of letters, the Rerum chymicarum epistolica forma ... liber (1595–1599) is a particularly important text in fashioning the subject of chemistry as a demonstrative science and as a didactic discipline. Where Libavius’ Alchemia, which some have claimed to be the first textbook of chemistry, had mostly a humanist agenda, the Rerum chymicarum ... liber more directly sought to wrest the subject of “chemistry” away from Paracelsian adepts, and established the methodological basis for a specific form of knowledge suitable to the university. Making use of Aristotle’s Posterior analytics Libavius created a “floor-plan” for chemistry that integrated practical experience with natural philosophy, and could thus, he claimed, penetrate more deeply into the structure of nature than other academic disciplines.     

How democratic is higher education for sustainable development?

We wondered how ‘democracy’ was being used and communicated within the higher education discourse of ‘education for sustainability’, or ‘for sustainable development’ (ES/ESD). We used a philosophical hermeneutic approach to explore the sense or senses in which the concept of democracy is used within this literature and supported our analysis by incorporating text about democracy from other disciplines. We conclude from our analysis that the concept of democracy within ES/ESD texts has evolved to suggest many meanings that in their entirety do not support our shared research mission towards ES/ESD. At the pens of ES/ESD scholars, democracy may have become one of Sartori's intolerably blunted conceptual tools.     

A retrospective view of a study of middle school science curriculum materials: Implementation,scale‐up,and sustainability in a changing policy environment

This article provides an extended, comprehensive example of how teachers, schools, districts, and external factors (e.g., parental pressure and policy mandates) shape curriculum research in the U.S. It retrospectively examines how three different middle school curriculum units were implemented and scaled‐up in a large, diverse school system. The curriculum materials were cognitively based, hands‐on, guided inquiry units; each focused on a different “big idea” in science. The units met some criteria for instructional strategies rated by the Project 2061 Curriculum Analysis. Using evidence‐based decisions, two of the units were found to be effective and equitable, and went to scale, but one was not effective. However, the course of scale‐up was also affected by a changing policy climate, and proceeded in unpredictable ways, with small scale effects not found at large scale, and experienced teachers less effective than inexperienced teachers. Four years after funding ended, none of the units were sustained within the school district. The interactions between the demands of the units and of the school district's policy environment suggests reasons why this occurred, despite evidence that two of the units were successful with diverse learners. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 305–332, 2012