The “right kind of telling”: knowledge building in the academic design studio

Studio-based instruction, as traditionally enacted in design disciplines such as architecture, product design, graphic design, and the like, consists of dedicated desk space for each student, extended time blocks allocated to studio classes, and classroom interactions characterized by independent and group work on design problems supplemented by frequent public and individual critiques. Although the surface features and pedagogy of the studio have been well-documented, relatively little attention has been paid to student and teacher participation structures through which design knowledge is co-produced among instructors and students within the studio. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of faculty?Cstudent interactions through which students learn to think and act as designers. To that end, we have collected and analyzed ethnographic data from five studio classrooms across three design disciplines (architecture, industrial design, and human?Ccomputer interaction). Our findings provide insight as to the ways that dialogue??the ??right kind of telling????and particular social practices in the studio support students as they learn to solve ill-structured design problems while being simultaneously inducted into practices that reflect the professional world of their discipline. In each of the studio classrooms, the instructors were able to create an environment where students and faculty practiced reflection-in-action and listening-in as a form of intentional participation, design knowledge was conveyed through modeling and meta-discussions, and focused assignments and in-progress critiques enhanced opportunities for the individual and group processes through which design knowledge was co-constructed in these studio classrooms.     

Prospects and pitfalls: A review of post‐apartheid education policy research and analysis in South Africa

The 10‐year anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa in 2004 provoked much reflection and fuelled new policy debates on both the progress and failures of educational reform. While a myriad of achievements have been touted and are well‐known to international audiences, a swelling critique from inside South Africa shows that much work remains to be done. By glancing backward as a way to understand how to move forward, we review several important recently published books on post‐apartheid education policy to learn how policies were conceived, what went well and what went seriously wrong. In engaging this extended analysis we provide a glimpse into the unique set of circumstances and challenges faced by the South African government over the last 15 years (namely the tensions between equity and redress and global competitiveness), while offering a sustained critique of the resulting policy outcomes through a social justice lens.     

Using cognitive referents in making sense of teaching: A chemistry teacher's struggle to change assessment practices

This qualitative case study focused on the role of cognitive referents in the sense-making process of one teacher as he attempted to change his classroom science assessment. The interpretations identify cultural myths, conceptual metonymys, as well as personally constructed beliefs as referents that constrained change. The teacher's cognitive struggle to make sense of assessment and his role as assessor are linked to conflicting referents he used in varying contexts including day-to-day assessment and summative assessment settings. The results of the study suggest that cognitive referents are important influences in driving how a teacher thinks about assessment and may constrain an individual teacher's implementation of innovative practices. Accordingly, identification of referents such as myths, their associated beliefs, and metonymic conceptual models that teachers use to make sense of their actions is an important first step in developing an understanding of constraints to educational change.     

The Issue at a Glance

THE ISSUE AT A GLANCE

The Issue at a Glance     

Understanding teachers’ careers: Linking professional life to professional path

This research synthesis aims to more fully understand the current teacher retention crisis in the United States through a re-conceptualization of what is meant by a teaching career. Currently, research is divided into two broad categories: traditional research on teacher retention and traditional research on teachers’ professional lives. This synthesis identifies key studies in both fields and argues for greater coordination between the two in an effort to conceive of teachers’ careers along a continuum and utilize a range of methodologies for understanding those careers. The author points to select studies which begin to bring these two fields together and suggests potential future research directions.     

‘Hope in failure’: A Level students,discursive agency,post-feminism and feminism

This article begins with Pollock’s comment that Judith Butler ‘finds hope in failure’ and its aim is to explore what ‘hope in failure’ means in relation to A Level students’ engagements with post-feminism and feminism. The article grounds its argument in an exploration of how post-feminism and feminism intersect with sixth form students’ subjectivities through the educational practices of their second-year A Level subject-based research. The article analyses empirical instances of students’ discursive agency through Butler’s notions of performativity, citationality, excessive signification and resignification to consider the complex, multiple and creative ways in which sixth form students produce themselves as viable gendered subjects in relation to post-feminist and feminist discourses. The analysis considers both how discourse regulates and conditions students’ relations with post-feminism and feminism and how discourse contains the possibilities for the subject to refuse the refusal of feminism in popular culture. Through its analysis of how students use their discursive agency to claim a feminist identity, and how these uses constitute transgressive practices, the article explores the political significance of identifications with feminism in doing gender differently. It ends with an argument for the re-consideration of the apparently assured popular cultural ‘failure’ of feminism in post-feminist neoliberal times.