Creative Endeavors: Inspiring Creativity in a First Grade Classroom

With an emphasis on high-stakes testing and a focused curriculum, it would seem at times, the joy of creativity is missing from the classroom. This article describes a curricular approach the children named “Creative Endeavors”, as implemented by a first grade teacher. The approach is described in three phases. In the exploratory stage the children were presented with various media, made requests for additional materials, and explored different forms of expression. In the second phase the children made choices based on interests, and typically worked with others in a spirit of collaboration with an emphasis on the process of the project as well as affective responses. In the final phase of intentional planning, children began to independently design, construct, and take responsibility for their project working alone or with others. Phases are intended to provide a blueprint for other teachers to explore creative endeavors in the classroom. Children in this project communicated through various media including sewing, photography, and drama. Through collaborating with peer and choosing projects, the children became authentically engaged in the various classroom experiences. Although the curricular approach was intended to foster creativity, in each phase writing about their projects became a natural and critical element in the process. Children wrote about their experiences, the steps they took to take part in the process, why they chose it, and reflected upon the projects undertaken.     

Investigating Strategies for Pre-Class Content Learning in a Flipped Classroom

In a flipped classroom model, learning of basic content is shifted before class while in-class time is used for concept application. Empirical and controlled research studies are lacking on the best strategies to provide the necessary pre-class content instruction. In this study, we tested three methods of pre-class content learning—interactive online tutorials, video lectures, and textbook-style readings—while holding the content and the in-class application activities constant. Identical introductory, non-majors biology classes were manipulated at both a public, open-enrollment institution and a private, highly selective institution. We found that video lectures offer a small advantage to overall student learning over interactive tutorials or textbook-style readings. Although our two populations differed in their ability to effectively learn from pre-class activities, through a student-centered flipped classroom approach, students at both institutions demonstrated equal learning gains by the final assessment. Potential reasons for some observed differences are suggested.     

Gender performativity in physics: affordances or only constraints?

In this forum we engage in a dialogue with Allison Gonsalves’s paper ‘“Physics and the girly girl—there is a contradiction somewhere”: Doctoral students’ positioning around discourses of gender and competence in physics’. In her paper Gonsalves uses a sociocultural approach to examine women doctoral students’ stories about becoming physicists. In doing so her paper focuses on how discourses of masculinity and femininity can create available and unavailable positions for the women students. In this dialogue we do a parallel reading of two of the student narratives presented by Gonsalves, using Judith Butler’s (1990) concept of discursive agency as a means to more explicitly bring the affordances for women identity constitution offered by their localized physicist context to the fore, rather focusing on its, often more visible, constraints.