Implications of Professional Writing Experiences of Academic Veterinary Scientists for Technical Writing Pedagogy

Five academic veterinary scientists were interviewed to learn about their professional writing experiences and relate them to technical writing pedagogy. The interviews probed the genres in which they write, their composing methods, their professional attitudes toward writing, and the sources of training in writing. The data suggest that while writing is an integral part of their research, teaching, and professional advancement and is used in conducting business, the academic scientific curriculum does not specifically address this important element in their careers.     

Now,what? Standing in one’s generation,taking consultation

ABSTRACT

I situate myself in the context of an evolving conversation in relation to what it means to be a woman. In my mother’s generation, the first wave of feminism forced a collision between traditional western female values grounded in a subversive authority and the desire to emerge from that type of repressive position. From the standpoint of my daughter’s generation, I may be tilting at windmills, trying to find my own authority in relation to a paternal authority that I feel deauthorises and devalues the voice I am trying to find. I take that consultation seriously, inviting me to think about relationships between what can and cannot be seen from any particular vertex. Given that maturation requires our ability to come to terms with difference and with limit, how can women more effectively enact and pass along the process of becoming oneself as a fundamental value?     

But good strategy instructors are constructivists!

The general nature of constructivist educators' views of teaching are overviewed first, followed by analysis of good strategy instruction in constructivist terms. That good strategy instruction is scaffolded teaching is particularly emphasized. Scaffolded teacher-student interactions necessitate that students experience unique instruction that stimulates a great deal of student construction of to-be-acquired competencies. The only important difference between good strategy teaching and teaching recommended by constructivist educators is in the explicitness of instruction, with relatively greater teacher input about what is to be learned during good strategy instruction.     

The design of tasks in support of teachers’ development of coherent mathematical meanings

We examine the role of tasks that have the intended effect of teachers re-conceiving the mathematics they teach as comprising a coherent body of meaningful ideas. We ground our discussion in ideas of trigonometry and modular functions and draw from a professional development research project to illustrate our approach. In this project, many teachers experienced dissonance that was rooted in their commitments to their curricular knowledge of trigonometry. Teachers who built new meanings into a coherent whole were those who coordinated them at a micro level. Teachers who saw implications of their own reasoning for student learning were also successful at expressing that reasoning in natural language. We saw a similar pattern in the case of teachers' creation of meanings for action and process conceptions of mod(f(x),g(x)). Teachers who gained insight into implications of their own activities for student learning were the teachers who reasoned at a micro level in regard to the meaning of mod, who coordinated that meaning with a covariational perspective on the behavior of functions, and who expressed that coordination in natural language. We conclude that a primary feature of tasks that promote teachers' construction of coherent mathematical meanings is that they support an overall effort to have teachers engage in the coordination of meanings in the context of explaining significant ideas and relationships.     

Vocational knowledge in rural children: A study of individual differences and predictors of occupational aspirations and expectations

Few studies have identified individual differences in vocational knowledge or its association with career aspirations or expectations of children. We investigated whether individual differences in grade, gender, academic achievement, and SES predict levels of vocational knowledge, and further examined the relationship between vocational knowledge and career aspirations and expectations. Children in the fourth through seventh grades (N = 132) from two rural school districts were administered measures of vocational knowledge, expectations, and aspirations. The results of this study suggest no differences in vocational knowledge in groups differing in grade, gender, and SES; however, academic achievement was a significant predictor of vocational knowledge. Moreover, results of regression analysis demonstrated that vocational knowledge adds significantly to the prediction of career aspirations and expectations. These results contribute to the emerging literature exploring mechanisms involved in the career development of rural children.     

Competing discourses in the ongoing identity construction of adult immigrants

Based on interviews with eight adult immigrants to Montreal, this article explores how discourses from their cultures of origin interact with discourses in the host culture to influence the process of identity construction during their acculturation to the host society. Drawing on sociocultural theory and psychological concepts of identity development, the roles of the often conflicting discourses from two different societies are analyzed in terms of their influences on the identity construction of these adult immigrants. The most prevalent recurring theme from the interview data concerned what participants referred to as shyness. The meanings of this theme and its political, economic, and sociocultural implications are discussed. Interview data from this study indicate the importance of sociocultural, political, and economic elements of the discourses of one's society of origin which could be taken into consideration in order to create a more inclusive host society.     

Book reviews

Webster, J. G., & Lichty, L. W. (1991). Ratings analysis: Theory and practice. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 290 pages.

Turow, J. (1992). Media systems in society: Understanding industries, strategies, and power. New York: Longman. 265 pages.

Blanchard, R. O., & Christ, W. G. (1993). Media education and the liberal arts: A blueprint for the new professionalism. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 187 pages.