Gateway to understanding: Indigenous ecological activism and education in urban,rural, and remote contexts

This article is a response to Kassam, Avery, and Ruelle’s insights as presented in this forum on rural science education. Topics considered include troubling the urban/rural divide in the context of Indigenous knowledge and expanding to include the common Canadian notion of the “remote”, a designation rooted in our national colonial narrative for the mythic, typically northern, wilderness sparsely inhabited by primarily Indigenous peoples. These concepts are further considered through exploration of Indigenous and allied ecological activism in Canada and the United States related to the proposed Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines. This discussion concludes with an argument for the inherent pedagogical opportunity presented by such cases for contemporary educators to engage students in consideration of wicked problems, geographically rooted cognitive diversity, and the legal, economic, ecological, and cultural underpinnings and ramifications of the current events prominent in their home communities and abroad.     

Linguistic Differences with Bilingual Parents Who are Immigrants: Words for Dialoguing About Young Children

While partnerships including meaningful, two-way, parent–teacher dialogue about young children during early childhood program and school meetings are critical, linguistic differences between bilingual parents who are immigrants and early educators can impede communication and lead to inequitable services. In this article, we focus on one aspect of linguistic differences for educators and bilingual parents: English-language adjectives used by teachers to describe young children. We highlight aspects of adjectives, their uses, and cultural contexts to illustrate potential misunderstandings that may lead to not only miscommunication but also challenges to partnerships and equitable early childhood service provision. Subsequently, we present recommendations to foster meaningful dialogue and greater understanding between educators and bilingual parents who are immigrants when dialoguing about young children.     

Exploring the Form and the Function: a Review of Science Discourse Frameworks in the Service of Research and Practice

Research in Science Education - The importance of how classroom discourse can be used to support science learning has gained national attention with respect to both science teaching and research...     

Undermatching and Noncognitive Development during the First Year of College: A Longitudinal Study of College Students in the Netherlands

Research in Higher Education - The study focuses on the phenomenon of “undermatching” in relation to the development of noncognitive attributes during the first year of college....     

English Language Standards in California,China and Mexico: History,Comparison, and Analysis

Interchange - Learning standards have become a prominent feature for schools and school systems worldwide. Our paper describes the development of recent English teaching standards in California,...     

Clay Modelling and Social Modelling: effects of interactive teaching on young children's creative artmaking

In this project, 28 6‐year‐olds were taught skills involved in artistic claywork using principles of social modelling and cognitive learning in a classroom situation, over a series of six lessons. A further 28 students, serving as controls, were taught according to the normal art curriculum. The students’ clay models were photographed on pre‐test and post‐test, and rated by three expert judges (professional artists familiar with children's artwork) blind to treatment conditions. The cognitive social learning group evidenced strong gains on measures of creativity as defined by approximation to a three‐dimensional form, technical competency, decorative competency and aesthetic appeal. The control group students failed to evidence any significant change in rated creativity.     

INDIVIDUALS, GROUPS, AND AGENDA MELDING: A THEORY OF SOCIAL DISSONANCE

Many studies have established that there is a degree of audiencelearning from the mass media, especially of new issues enteringthe news. But recent studies show an agenda-setting effect atdeeper levels beyond broad news categories. Audiences also absorbthe attributes of news—the frames and slants in the waynews is presented—and this suggests that while the massmedia do not tell us what to think, the mass media do have considerablepower to tell us how to think about topics, with implicationsfor social policy. Beyond these two levels of agenda setting,however, is something more significant—agenda melding.Agenda melding argues that individuals join groups, in a sense,by joining agendas. There is a powerful impulse to affiliatewith others in groups as one leaves the original family setting,and one joins these groups via media of connections, mostlyother people but also other media. This paper suggests a modelof agenda melding that accounts for the role of media (massor interpersonal) in helping individuals move toward or awayfrom groups. This attempts to build toward general social theoryby suggesting the role of media in how individuals functionwith others in a coherent social system.     

Liberal arts colleges and Standards for College Libraries: a quantitative analysis

Standards for College Libraries provide benchmarks for collection size and professional staffing. Formulas from the Standards were used to compare the recommended collection size and number of professional librarians with the actual size of the collections and the number of librarians for a random sample of Baccalaureate I and II colleges.     

Online Teaching and Self-Efficacy to Work With Suicidal Clients

We used an experimental design to evaluate the impact of three online teaching strategies on students' self-efficacy to work with suicidal clients. Results showed that the three strategies, informed by adult learning and social learning theory, were equally effective. Implications for programs preparing students for suicide intervention roles are discussed.