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.     

“Improving and Embellishing the Wilderness”: Spreading the Gospel of Proper Land Use,New Harmony,Indiana, 1814–1824

This article examines the westward imposition of specific kinds of land use by focusing on the Harmony Society's transformation of Posey County, Indiana. The German pietistic society carried their vision of proper land use from Europe to Pennsylvania and, in 1814, to what was then considered the West: Indiana Territory. During their decade in Indiana, the Harmonists attempted to exploit, control, and beautify the natural environment. The goal of “improving and embellishing the Wilderness”—as well as survival and profit—provided the justification for clearing forests, draining wetlands, mining subsoil, planting crops, creating pastures, altering waterways, and hunting local fauna; all of these activities greatly transformed the ecosystems of southwestern Indiana. Ultimately, the Harmonists’ notions of land use were transmitted, learned, and, eventually, codified.     

A program to improve elementary teacher preparation in science at Rollins College

Conclusion The goals of this project were to design and implement a series of courses that would better prepare elementary school teachers to teach science and would promote positive attitudes toward science and science teaching. The initial offering of the first series of courses met with moderate success. Although the courses fostered an increase in cognitive knowledge, the magnitude of the improvement was not what we had anticipated. There was no significant improvement in the attitudes of the students toward science or science teaching. The science course has been revised and is currently being offered for both preservice and inservice teachers. The revisions include lengthening the class time, so that the material can be covered at a more relaxed pace, and increasing the amount of active team teaching by the instructors to further emphasize the interrelations between chemistry and biology and to eliminate the fragmentation of the course. It is hoped that these changes will also have a positive impact on the students’ attitudes toward the course and thus toward science in general.     

Feeling like a fraud: Helping students renegotiate their academic identities

A sense of belonging is an integral aspect of success in a long-term, group-oriented endeavor such as the pursuit of a college education. When students feel their presence at college is fraudulent, their achievements unfounded, or that they will be further disenfranchised if their true self is discovered, it is less likely that they will connect to the people who and services that can help them achieve their educational goals. This “imposter syndrome” or “imposter phenomenon” can be addressed and turned around through a concerted effort. While that effort involves a personal journey, like any journey it is often aided and accompanied by others. Through strategic outreach efforts, academic libraries are positioned to be important players in that journey, helping these “imposters” renegotiate their self-images to include a sense of their essential place in academia and belief in their ability to successfully complete their academic goals.     

Use of learner‐centered instruction in college science and mathematics classrooms

Learner‐centered approaches to science and mathematics instruction assume that only when students are active participants will learning be deep, enduring, and enjoyable, and transfer to contexts beyond the classroom. Although their beneficial effects are well known, the extent to which learner‐centered practices are used in college classrooms may be low. Surveys of undergraduate science and math majors reveal general dissatisfaction with how courses in their majors are taught, and their number is half what it was 2 decades ago. In response, federally funded systemic reform initiatives have targeted increasing the use learner‐centered instruction in science and mathematics courses to improve undergraduate education generally and the training of preservice teachers specifically. Few data exist regarding how effective these initiatives have been or how frequently learned‐centered instruction occurs as assessed from faculty's perspective, which may not corroborate undergraduate perceptions. Accordingly, a survey was developed to assess the use of learner‐centered techniques and was administered to science and math professors of Louisiana over the Internet. The return rate was 28%. Analyses reveal that they are used infrequently, but when used, are applied to all aspects of teaching. Data also suggest that federal funding has been slightly effective in promoting its use. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 566–584, 2003