Centering the Margins: White preservice teachers' responses to Roll of Thunder

Over the course of several years, the award-winning adolescent novel, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry , was used as the centerpiece for a study of white, female preservice teachers' perceptions of race as an issue in classroom discourse. Invented dialogues created by these preservice teachers were examined to learn more about the issues that troubled them as they considered teaching this novel in the future. They identified language, "reverse racism" and creating distress among children as particularly salient concerns. Examples from these teacher candidates are explicated and theorized.     

The Empire Writes Back…Back: Postcolonial Studies in an Age of Autogenic War

This essay attempts to disclose a uniquely volatile nexus that implicates – and perhaps, reinvigorates – a postcolonial analytics of insurgency. This nexus includes three strands of inquiry: the first is the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which really is – albeit in a qualified sense – revolutionary. War is doing new things with time and space through culture, media, and data technology, and in the process is mutating not only what it means to be a part of this or that national group but is also changing what it means to be human. The second strand of inquiry focuses on the legacy of postcolonial studies, particularly the notion of ‘writing back’ which, I contend, is an apposite starting point for writing critically about the RMA. Apposite though it is, there are limits to postcolonial studies in the contemporary war context. This is so because while the divisions of individual difference are shifting, the coherence of the nation state itself is undergoing radical change. Moving outward in scope to a planetary scale, the human being per se is no longer a primary category by and for which war is happening today. Thus the third strand of inquiry is focused on the residual anthropomorphic tendencies within postcolonial studies that too narrowly limit discussions of violence and collective belonging. The concept of the human being per se remains reliant on early models of technology and media (namely, writing and literature, usually novels). Therefore, in the context of an ever-expanding global war machine, ‘writing back’ is a concept that requires fine-tuning and revision.     

The art and artifice of early sports photography

Abstract

The rise of modern sport in the mid-nineteenth century coincided with the emergence of photography as a new image-making medium. Thus, both practices developed in parallel. Notably, many early photographers turned to sport as a subject for their work, despite the early technological limitations of the medium. Histories of photography have, however, tended to overlook this. Similarly, sport historians have tended to regard these early photographs simply as illustrative material rather than important innovations in the formation of new visual conventions for the representation of sport. This paper seeks to redress this by exploring, in close detail, examples of sports photography produced in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. More importantly, it examines the visual vocabularies deployed by these early photographers within the context of contemporary art practices, demonstrating how artistry and artifice were deployed in the production of some of the earliest, and finest, examples of sports photography ever produced.     

Using teacher stories to reveal quality educational practice: An Eastern Cape experience

The University of Fort Hare Distance Education Project set out to improve qualifications of primary teachers in rural and township schools in the Eastern Cape of the Republic of South Africa. At the culmination of an 11-year AUSAid collaboration between the University of Fort Hare and University of South Australia a research project to reveal quality educational practice was undertaken. Using oral histories as the methodology, teacher stories were gathered through a sequence of interviews and classroom observations. This collection of oral histories constitutes the basis for the paper. Its research focus has been the science and mathematics practices of eight teachers who typify the many hundreds who participated in the project. This paper explores the use of oral history as a methodology for documenting quality educational practice.     

Knowing,Believing, and Understanding: What Goals for Science Education?

Science &; Education - What is a teacher to do when confronted with a student who says “I understand that theory (e.g., evolution), but I don't believe it”? The purpose of this...     

Current conceptions of literacy – insights from work with children and older learners with sensory needs

There have been many efforts to conceptualise literacy, both in terms of its essence and component parts, but it has proved difficult to define. This paper considers work that is undertaken with children and older learners with sensory needs in order to promote the early stages of literacy. Recent government initiatives aimed at fostering literacy development have caused teachers of children with sensory needs to re-examine their practice. The paper discusses early literacy as part of children's attempts to communicate and describes children with sensory needs engaging in a range of activities that are termed 'literacy' by those working with them. By taking into account these activities, the authors endeavour to throw light on the broader questions around concepts of literacy.     

The paradox of un/making science people: practicing ethico-political hesitations in science education

Over the years neoliberal ideology and discourse have become intricately connected to making science people. Science educators work within a complicated paradox where they are obligated to meet neoliberal demands that reinscribe dominant, hegemonic assumptions for producing a scientific workforce. Whether it is the discourse of school science, processes of being a scientist, or definitions of science particular subjects are made intelligible as others are made unintelligible. This paper resides within the messy entanglements of feminist poststructural and new materialist perspectives to provoke spaces where science educators might enact ethicopolitical hesitations. By turning to and living in theory, the un/making of certain kinds of science people reveals material effects and affects. Practicing ethicopolitical hesitations prompt science educators to consider beginning their work from ontological assumptions that begin with abundance rather than lack.     

Influences of Writing Tasks on Students' Answers to Recall and Higher-Level Test Questions

This paper reports on two inter-related studies that examined the use of non-traditional writing strategies within secondary school science classrooms. The first study involved Year 10 students who incorporated one letter writing experience into the learning sequence when studying genetics. The second study was with Year 9 students who used both a non-traditional laboratory writing heuristic and letter writing as part of the learning sequence when studying a topic on light. The same teacher was involved in both case studies. A higher-level analogy question was added to the teacher-prepared tests for each study to examine if students who participated in writing-to-learn activities were able to perform significantly better as a group than a group of students who completed traditional teacher directed laboratory activities and note-taking. Results indicate that for the first study there was not a significant difference using t-test analysis, while for the second study involving two writing treatments there was a statistically significant difference using t-test analysis. There was no statistically significant difference in responses between treatment and control groups when answering low level recall questions for either case study. Student interviews indicated awareness by students of the metacognitive value gained by using the non-traditional writing types.     

International organizations,educational development,and conflict: A (world) cultural perspective

PROSPECTS - Many analyses of globalized education have directed growing attention to a problematic local-global nexus, with a particular focus on international organizations (IOs) as coercive and...