Forthcoming Conferences

Thirty 14‐15‐year‐old pupils were taught about the effect of temperature and pressure on a gaseous reaction at equilibrium. Two problems were then given to the pupils and a word association test on a small number of carefully chosen stimulus words was administered in the context of the problems. The pupils were finally interviewed about what they had done in the tests. The results of all of the tests were analysed and compared for evidence of perception and strategy.

Various strategies were found to have been used by the pupils: one based on the formally correct perception of Le Chatelier's rule, one based on a perception in which the speed of a reaction is the factor that governs position of equilibrium (this was the major incorrect strategy), one that uses spurious analogies with more familiar factors (such as ‘catalyst') and one that reflects only superficial learning with no evidence of Le Chatelier's principle.

Comparisons with the classroom tests and the interview data revealed that about 60% of the word association test results produced responses that were criterial for the problem‐solving strategies adopted by the pupils, both correct and incorrect. The results show that this type of word association offers a means of unobtrusive, formative testing which, with experience, could be used to anticipate learning problems in science lessons.     

Teacher competency testing: what are special education teachers expected to know?

Teacher competency testing (TCT) is a current manifestation of education reform; 48 of the 50 states are actively planning or implementing teacher testing programs, and 25 (plus the District of Columbia) are developing or administering tests in specific subject areas to include special education. This article presents the results of a nationwide survey that addressed TCT in special education. Responses were collected from 46 states and the District of Columbia. Analyses of results revealed that states vary in their use of teacher competency tests and that specific special education teacher competency tests are used or being actively studied in about half the states. Implications for the practice of special education are provided.     

Restoring realism: themes and variations

Abstract

In the critical tradition, environmental education discourse interrogates how knowledge constructs experience. But environmental education also emphasises perceiving, understanding and responding to “more-than-human” beings and processes. These two motivations are in tension. One problem is that the epistemological orientation driving the critique of knowledge seems to render access to something more-than-human a priori impossible. But environmental education squanders its promise and its dream if only ever permitted to talk about the natural world with scarequotes. Our field urgently needs to develop a realism robust against epistemologies that construct impassable barriers between humans and the rest of creation. I propose that this starts with radically reconceiving the nature and relationship between similarity and difference, interpreted in this article as the dynamic between theme and variations. Reworking Windelband’s distinction between idiographic and nomothetic research, I suggest that the relationship between theme and variation manifests a fundamental ontological pattern that pervades all things. “Theme and variation” proposes a unifying metaphysical duality in which the more-than-human reveals itself in how things suggest, conform to, modulate, and violate generalisation. Acknowledging and investigating this is part of restoring to other beings and processes their metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical status, from the skies to the psyche.