Educational model for environmental‐cognition development

Environmental education (EE) is an holistic educational approach the main goal of which is to develop the students’ environmental cognition, as compared to the disciplinary approach which develops a compartmentalized cognition. Environmental cognition is defined as a reciprocal relationship, comprising knowledge, understanding, sensitivity, perceptiveness and imagination with regard to the environment as well as responsibility and motivation to make environmental decisions. A conceptual model was constructed for this purpose comprising three stages: sensing the environment and generating questions; analysing and then synthesizing a system presentation of the environment, thereby focusing upon the inter‐relatedness and interdependence of environmental components; and environmental problem‐solving.

The model was implemented for training EE teachers and for EE curriculum development. Both of which may enhance the inclusion of EE within the formal educational system.     

Changing Teachers – Teachers Changing Schools: assessing a graduate program in technology education

ABSTRACT

Innovative uses of technology may require a revision of educational policy and practice if technology is going to have an impact on the educational system. In 1993 the University of New Mexico College of Education began a four semester in‐service graduate program to develop teacher knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that might assist the teacher to confront today's challenges without being restricted by past patterns. During the second year of its implementation, a comprehensive research study was instituted to assess the impact of the program. This paper presents findings relevant to the outcomes of the program. The results reveal that significant shifts occurred among participants in the frequency of use of technology and student‐oriented strategies and that participants were increasingly concerned with assuming leadership roles in their schools and school districts. Four dimensions of the program were central in achieving these results: its cohort nature, the fact that it was graduate, the use of telecommunications, and the incorporation of group activities by faculty that modeled frameworks and practices under study. The program was effective in helping participants to examine their educational beliefs and assumptions, to turn their perceptions into practices, and to shift their concerns from personal impacts and insecurities to global and system‐wide impacts and potentials. Graduate study for these educators has become a process of change with already discernible consequences for New Mexico schools.     

‘Brown Morning:’ classed interpretations of anti-racist text

This article examines the interpretations of high school students from different socioeconomic locations (in terms of socioeconomic class and ethnicity) with regard to the text Brown Morning, used as a didactic tool for antiracism education within the framework of Civics courses. The research findings uncover differences in the students’ interpretations of the text. An in-depth understanding of these differences will be attained through clinical analyses based on the distinctions between metaphor and metonymy made by linguist Roman Jakobson. Among students from low socioeconomic locations, interpretations related to racism were dominated by metonymic characteristics, while that of students from higher socioeconomic locations were predominantly metaphoric. Study findings do not only show the different interpretations among the students, but also the various ways in which metaphorical and metonymic language affect teachers. These analyses will focus on the reasons for these differences and their implications regarding the links between social locations, language, and education.     

Agentive suspension of oppressive structures: self-concept and emotion-work among Muslim mothers who study at a Jewish university

This article aims to highlight the significance of self-concept and emotion-work in the everyday experiences of Muslim mothers who are students at a Jewish university. This research objective was achieved by means of in-depth interviews with mothers who are all studying to earn master’s degrees. Our study reveals three main findings. The first is an ‘inundated self’ that experiences frequent phenomenological preoccupation with the dialectic between structure and agency, as well as acute internal transitions between space-affiliated self-concepts, thus making it difficult to establish narrative coherence. The second is the agentive suspension of the structure. And last is the emotion-work (characterized by experiences of aloneness, which is dissimilar from loneliness) and management of emotional tension. The discussion section suggests pondering the unique interaction between structure and agency, especially the agentive strategies that enable creative inventions.     

An interactive model of parents’ involvement and their children’s functioning in school

This study examined relationships between Parents’ involvement as related to their Identification and Alertness and to four students’ variables Attitudes toward school, Social adjustment, Self-efficacy and Academic achievements. Social adjustment was the most dominant variable and served as a mediator between self-efficacy and achievements. Parental involvement had significant, direct and positive relations with social adjustment but negative with academic achievements. Findings indicate a weakening of the relationships between parents’ involvement, identification, and alertness and children’s variables compared to the relationships between children’s variables. Educational staff and parents must create useful communication channels for helping children cope with the challenges of their social and media world.     

From raising awareness to curricular change: moving towards equal opportunities in the secondary school

Schools are currently being asked to be in competition with each other and collaborate at the same time. The 1988 Education Reform Act and the Technical and Vocational Initiative (TVEI) seem to be promoting conflicting models of school development. This paper looks at the background to these policies and investigates how one TVEI cluster is responding to the challenge. The methodology includes the use of transcribed interviews and a reduction/display analysis method. The resulting conclusions show a great deal of support for collaborative ventures, but not a total rejection of competition. Other findings relate to cluster management and the effects of the nearby city technology college.     

‘Conceptual change’ as both revolutionary and evolutionary process

Our argument concerning the debate around the process of ‘conceptual change’ is that it is both an evolutionary learning process and a revolutionary paradigm change. To gain a deeper understanding of the process, the article focuses on the discourse of educational facilitators participating in a community of learners. Applying the methodology of ‘Semiotic Evolution,’ the micro‐process of learning within the group was traced. Analysis of the interaction between individual learning and group learning within the discourse enabled us to postulate a hypothetical three‐stage model of the process. The model indicates that conceptual change is an experiential change rather than a cognitive one, an intentional change of identity, a change of the person's relationship with the world.