Queering high school biology textbooks

As teachers committed to educating all students, we need to learn more about how instructional materials shape representations of sexuality and gender. Through its insistent deconstruction of the norms that structure practice and belief, queer theory offers perspectives from which science educators can question assumptions embedded in textbooks. This article applies queer theory to analyze eight biology textbooks used in the United States. Specifically, we ask how biology textbooks address sexuality outside the heterosexual norm and if they propagate heteronormative attitudes. The textbooks examined offer deafening silences, antiseptic factoids, socially sanitized concepts, and politically correct binary‐gendered illustrations. In these textbooks, the term homosexuality was used only in the context of AIDS where, along with iv drug users, they were identified as an affected group. The pervasive acceptance of heteronormative behavior privileges students that fit the heterosexual norm, and oppresses through omission and silence those who do not. We offer implications for practice to help science educators broaden their perspectives on the constructs of sexuality and gender to construct new ways of knowing and understanding differences in science classrooms and the natural world. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 617–636, 2004     

Narrow identity resources for future students: the 21st century skills movement encounters the Norwegian education policy context

21st century skills is a global network of corporate and governmental influences that promotes competences suited to fit the future knowledge economy. Through a discourse analysis of an influential Official Norwegian Report, ‘The School of the Future. Renewal of Subjects and Competences’ (NOU 2015:8), this paper explores how ideas of 21st century skills are translated into the Norwegian education policy context. Firstly, the paper analyses the context-specific reasons for receptiveness by investigating discursive warrants. Secondly, the paper identifies how the policy document constructs a set of preferred subject positions that constitute an image of an ideal student. Thirdly, the paper investigates the discursive framing of these subject positions. We find that the policy document constructs an image of an ideal student who is creative, responsible, cooperative, engaged, self-regulated and in complete control of herself, her learning and her future. This image draws on more pronounced neo-liberal discourses, but also well-established discourses in the Norwegian context, such as social democratic progressivism. This intertwining of discourses shows how traits of homogeneity related to global ideas, as well as heterogeneity related to the Norwegian policy context, are both visible in the Norwegian translation of 21st century skills.     

Creating feminised critical spaces and co-caring communities of practice outside patriarchal managerial landscapes

The experiences of five female lecturers working in higher education in the UK are explored as they engage in the search for a feminised critical space as a refuge from the masculinised culture of performativity in which they feel constrained and devalued. Email exchanges were used as a form of narrative enquiry that provided opportunity and space to negotiate identities and make meaning from experiences. The exchanges provided a critical space, characterised by trust, honesty and care for the self and for each other, that enabled a sharing of authentic voices and a reaffirming of identities that were made vulnerable through the exposing of the self as an emotional, politicised subject. Drawing on existing theoretical understandings of critical feminised spaces enabled us to create a pedagogical framework for work with students in further developing caring and co-caring communities of practice that are not alternative to, but are outside the performativity landscape of education.     

A primer of research on cognitive strategy instruction: The important issues and how to address them

Five types of strategy research are reviewed. (1) We argue it makes sense first to determine whether there is a need for strategy instruction. If there is, (2) development of a treatment with preliminary evaluations can follow, as can (3) formal evaluation of the resultant intervention in true experiments. As instructional need research, strategy development, and experimental evaluation proceed, two other types of research should be conducted. (4) It is important to study the acceptability of strategy interventions to educators and students. (5) Research on material modifications can provide information about how strategy benefits can be made available to students when strategy instruction is not effective or unlikely to occur. Very little strategy instruction has been evaluated in all five types of research covered here, making obvious the need for more systematic research on strategies. Observational, ethnographic, and experimental methods are required in order to address the many issues comprising comprehensive empirical analysis of any type of strategy instruction, with many recommendations made here about how to conduct informative studies.     

Salary administration in the management systems of higher education

Faculty productivity and behavior are evaluated in this salary administration system through the use of objective and subjective performance standards. The utilization of control channels that are delineated by moral, legal and functional standards allow faculty to compete against their own records. The replacement of dog eat dog rivalry with self competition permits cooperation to be accentuated among faculty through teamwork, collaboration and group learning. The employment of control channels to monitor faculty productivity with computer technology helps toprotect academicians from coercive practices. In addition,it provides for their success through the use of standards of excellence to push them up to exemplary levels of performance over time.Dr. Gunn earned his undergraduate (B.S.) degree in mangement at West Virginia University and his master's (M.S.) and doctorate (Ph.D.) degree in Marketing and Finance at Louisiana State University. Professor Gunn has produced over 60 refereed articles and program papers in a wide variety of periodicals includingManagement Science, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Education, etc. His current research interests involve developing the theories, concepts and techniques for advancing the acceptance of the Steady State Economy, the Competruistic Ideology, National Economic Planning and the use of Systems Science Methodology in raising organizational productivity.     

Online learning experiences of new versus continuing learners: a large-scale replication study

A vast body of research has indicated the importance of distinguishing new vs. continuing students’ learning experiences in blended and online environments. Continuing learners may have developed learning and coping mechanisms for ‘surviving’ in such learning environments, while new learners might still need to adjust their learning approaches to the new learning context. In this large-scale replication study, we investigated whether and how the learning satisfaction experiences of 16,670 new vs. 99,976 continuing students were different. Using logistical regression modelling of learner satisfaction scores of 422 undergraduate blended and online modules (including 232 learner and module learning design variables), our findings indicated that new learners indeed differed subtly in their learning and teaching experiences across two consecutive academic years. The minor differences in key drivers between the 2014 and 2015 cohorts also indicate that institutions need to continuously monitor and act upon changing learning needs.     

Enhance learning on software project management through a role-play game in a virtual world†

This article presents a role-play game for software project management (SPM) in a three-dimensional online multiuser virtual world. The Opensimulator platform is used for the creation of an immersive virtual environment that facilitates students' collaboration and realistic interaction, in order to manage unexpected events occurring during the development of a software project. Through the simulation of a real-life company, the game aims to enhance experiential learning of human-related issues, such as project team members’ communication and collaboration, which are not easy to be taught through ordinary teaching methods. Roles are assigned to the participating students, who have to overcome problems initiated by non-player-units (software controlled units) while collaborating with other students and the instructor. The instructor, holding a key role in the game, is able to observe the players, intervene and dynamically alter specific game scenario parameters adapting to player encounter difficulties. The environment is combining the experience of a typical game (based on an event-driven SPM scenario and interaction with non-player-units), with the experience of a virtual world (interacting with other players) and has been positively evaluated by the participants regarding the overall game experience and the learning effect.