Seeing double: design and enactments of a lesson on perspective-taking

ABSTRACT

This narrative inquiry of a lesson intended to develop perspective-taking links our understanding of teachers as curriculum makers with a sociomaterial attunement to the ways that materials, forms, and time are also actors in producing curriculum. We offer a close reading of three classroom enactments of the same lesson and discuss ways that these instances of curriculum-making expanded or diminished opportunities for elementary pupils to communicate shifts in perspective through personal narrative writing. We find temporal, spatial, and material resources, including schedules, technologies, and forms of assessment, to play key roles in shaping relations in curriculum making.     

An analysis of predictors of early academic dismissal

As a first step in developing a model of academic dismissal, logistic regression was employed to analyze predictors of academic performance (academic dismissal versus satisfactory performance) for first-time freshmen after one semester in an eastern state university. The analyses for each of two entry years produced very similar results. The analyses indicated that academic performance was highly related to high school academic grade point average (gpa). After controlling for SAT Verbal and SAT Math scores and high school academic gpa, race and the academic grouping of the student's major were significantly related to academic performance. However, for students of a given race and in a given academic grouping with the same SAT Verbal scores, the same SAT Math scores, and the same high school academic gpas, there was no significant difference in the predicted probability of academic dismissal for (1) men and women students, (2) dormitory and commuter students, and (3) full-time and part-time students.     

The age of Twitter: Donald J. Trump and the politics of debasement

This essay explores the changing character of public discourse in the Age of Twitter. Adopting the perspective of media ecology, the essay highlights how Twitter privileges discourse that is simple, impulsive, and uncivil. This effect is demonstrated through a case study of Donald J. Trump's Twitter feed. The essay concludes with a brief reflection on the end times: a post-truth, post-news, President Trump, Twitter-world.     

University and Department Influences on Scientists’ Occupational Outcomes

Research in Higher Education - Over 50,000 Ph.D. degrees in Science and Engineering (S&E) are awarded annually by United States (U.S.) universities, but few studies have systematically...     

Living at the Border: between multiculturality,complexity and action research

The author looks into the phases of her personal experience in order to present the difficulties as well as the richness of ‘living at the border’ and of building bridges between different worlds. The prevailing Anglo-Saxon culture, above all in the world of research, obliges those who do not belong to this culture to undergo a form of tension between adaptation to language rules and ways of thinking that are foreign to them, and the need to maintain cultural and personal differences while trying to communicate. The experience of ‘contagion’ between ideas and ways of representing the world, that was seen within the Environment and School Initiatives Project (ENSI) project and that the author had the opportunity to share with John Elliott, shows the possibilities offered by these encounters. Issues such as those of the complexity and quality of learning have interweaved with those of action research and evaluation, and have crossed and enriched the values and cultures of which we were implicitly and explicitly the bearers. In the final section the author makes an attempt to illustrate the risks of today's globalisation and the tendency to eliminate borders, viewed as obstacles to individual freedom, for a kind of equalisation which, by eliminating the differences, also eliminates the possibility of development and of creativity.     

The Pedagogy and Politics of Art in Postmodernity: Cognitive Mapping and The Bothersome Man

This essay inquires into the pedagogical and political dimensions of art in the contemporary moment. Specifically, it seeks to reanimate Fredric Jameson's notion of “cognitive mapping,” which he introduced as a response to the postmodern problem of representing the social totality. To that end, the essay begins by explicating the twin impulses of cognitive mapping. It, then, undertakes a sustained rhetorical analysis of Jens Lien's award-winning 2006 Norwegian film, The Bothersome Man, demonstrating how the film employs entropic satire to, at once, map and critique the cultural logic of late capitalism. The essay concludes by reflecting on the important contributions rhetorical scholars can make to a renewed interest in cognitive mapping.     

Academic discipline and risk perception of technologies: An empirical study

This article brings together two areas of research: studies on risk perception of technologies and studies on vocational/career choice. This is an important link since decisions concerning technologies are influenced by decision makers’ risk perceptions and these in turn may be related to educational and career paths.We analyze students of different academic disciplines with regard to their risk perception of four technologies. The aim is to find out whether there is a relationship between area of study (as a precursor of vocational and career choice) and risk perception of technologies regarding health, environment and society. The four technologies under study are renewable energies, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and information and communication technologies (ICT). Key results are: irrespective of academic discipline risk of genetic engineering on average is rated highest and renewable energies lowest. This holds for all the risks studied (environmental, health, societal risks). On average, students from different academic disciplines differ in their risk perception. Factor analyses show that common dimensions of risk are the technologies and not the kind of risk. Regression analyses show that the variables influencing perceived risks vary between the technological fields.     

Working with artefacts: gestures, drawings and speech in the construction of the mathematical meaning of the visual pyramid

This paper reports a part of a study on the construction of mathematical meanings in terms of development of semiotic systems (gestures, speech in oral and written form, drawings) in a Vygotskian framework, where artefacts are used as tools of semiotic mediation. It describes a teaching experiment on perspective drawing at primary school (fourth to fifth grade classes), starting from a concrete experience with a Dürer’s glass to the interpretation of a new artefact. We analyse the long term process of appropriation of the mathematical model of perspective drawing (visual pyramid) through the development of gestures, speech and drawings under the teacher’s guidance.

The Fastest Humans on Earth: Environmental Surroundings and Family Influences That Spark Talent Development in Olympic Speed Skaters

This qualitative research study addressed this question: What influence did early environmental surroundings and family have on the talent development of a cohort of American speed skaters who each competed in four Olympic Games during the 1980s and 1990s? The skaters were Bonnie Blair, Dave Cruikshank, and Dan Jansen. Independent interviews with each skater uncovered rich and unique stories with common threads. Regarding environmental surroundings, all hailed from communities in the Midwest with a rich skating tradition, an oversized hockey rink or 400-m oval, a large skating club, and strong coaches and teammates. In addition, all gravitated to Milwaukee, a speed skating Mecca with ideal training facilities, where they crossed and joined paths. Regarding family, all were born into skating or athletic families and were raised by supportive and guiding parents who were involved but not pushy. Siblings also played an influential role for Blair and Jansen, who were the youngest behind long lines of brothers and sisters who were also talented skaters and who paved the way for their youngest siblings.