Constructivism in Mathematics Classrooms: Listening to Ghanaian Teachers’ and Students’ Views

One of the challenges of implementing a new curriculum is how to bridge the gap between the underlining principles of the curriculum and the cultural and social orientations of the society which includes teachers and students. This article reports on a study that explored how the cultural and social orientations of teachers and students can influence the implementation of a constructivist curriculum in mathematics classrooms. The data for the study came from 250 students and 41 mathematics teachers, using questionnaires, observations, and interviews. The results showed that inasmuch as mathematics teachers and their students acknowledge the importance of student’s active participation and teamwork, these practices have not been fully conceptualised into the Ghanaian mathematics classroom due to some cultural factors. Two main cultural factors were discovered from the analyses of the results. Firstly, the culture of acknowledging only correct answers in class has a negative impact on individual students’ confidence and participation during mathematics lessons. Also, the culture of teamwork is not fully accepted within Ghanaian classrooms as most students find it difficult working in groups and accepting and appreciating each other’s view. It was evident in all lessons that students were ridiculed by their peers when they provide a wrong answer to a question and this affected individual students’ participation in the classroom. Therefore, we suggested that teachers should be pro-active in promoting a classroom environment which is free from fear and intimidation to motivate students to be actively involved in the classroom discourse.     

Spontaneous partitioning: Pre-schoolers and discrete items

This study addresses the question of whether a dealing strategy that is widely used by young children in clinical interviews occurs in less structured situations. Our findings are that it did not in the setting we examined, namely the performance of a routine counting task, by pre-schoolers with the opportunity of sharing sweets when the task was completed. We discuss reasons for the apparent discrepancies between the results for clinical interviews and less structured situations.     

From Digital Consumption to Digital Invention: Toward a New Critical Theory and Practice of Multiliteracies

The teaching of media and digital literacies has gained increased attention in the 20 years following the New London Group’s landmark publication. From approaches urging the study of popular culture to calls for youth led social media revolution, there is no shortage of approaches. Yet scant attention is offered toward articulating a new and comprehensive theory of pedagogy and production that acknowledges the changing tools and technologies at young people’s disposal, conceptualizes young people as media producers, and applies these developments to today’s complex classroom context. We aim to articulate a new critical theory of multiliteracies that encompasses 4 types of digital engagement: (a) critical digital consumption, (b) critical digital production, (c) critical distribution, and (d) critical digital invention. We make the argument that a new critical theory of multiliteracies needs to account for each of these types of digital engagement but that, ultimately, we must move beyond theorizing our youth as passive consumers or even critical users of digital technologies toward the project of facilitating youth communities of digital innovation.     

Ways of thinking about the future: Implications for nontraditional graduate education

Post-secondary educational institutions are characterized by their seemingly inherent resistance to the nontraditional. Understanding ways of thinking about the future, however, will help the educator who has nontraditional ideas to plan and implement these ideas more effectively. This article presents different orientations to thinking about the future and employs futures analysis techniques for discussing some of the major ideas in the previous articles in this special journal issue.     

College-bound high-school graduates of 1972 and 1980 compared by college major

College enrollments are shown to have increased since the 1970s for majors in computer science, engineering, and business, and to have decreased for the biological and social sciences, the humanities, and education. In both the 1970s and the 1980s, high average levels of high-school achievement are observed for declared college majors in science and engineering fields. Education and business majors display records of relatively low average levels of achievement in high school, as do college dropouts, whatever their college major.     

Influences affecting the development of students' critical thinking skills

This study estimates the relative and unique effects on changes in critical thinking of three dimensions of students' college experience: curricular exposure, formal classroom and instructional experiences, and out-of-class experiences. Students' classroom/instructional and out-of-class experiences both make positive, statistically significant, and unique contributions to gains in critical thinking above and beyond students' precollege characteristics and level of critical thinking. Theoreticians have long speculated that students' academic and nonacademic experiences jointly influence change, and this study supports that belief. The design and instruments in this study may be of interest to persons involved in assessment or the study of college impact.Paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Institutional Research, New Orleans, LA, May 1993.The National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), under Grant No. R117G10037. The opinions herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of OERI, and no official endorsement should be inferred.     

Off with a theme: Emergent curriculum in action

Early childhood teachers can plan developmentally appropriate classrooms through a fusion of thematic and emergent curriculum approaches. Ernie, a preschool teacher/university professor working in a campus laboratory setting, designed and implemented a space theme which was relevant to young children, allowed them many opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge and skills and expand upon them in significant ways, and incorporated a variety of materials and resources. Overall, the use of this theme reflected the initial and emergent interests of both the teachers and children, as they interacted in the social environment.     

Sonya Hartnett's Thursday's Child: Readings

Sonya Hartnett's Thursday's Child was published in Australia by Penguin Books in 2000. Editions are available in the UK (Walker Books, 2002), the USA (Candlewick, 2002), as well as in Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Denmark. In 2002, the book was awarded the Guardian's Children's Fiction Prize in the UK. Like Harper, the narrator of the novel, Sonya Hartnett began to write early—her first book, Trouble All the Way, was written when she was 13 and published 2 years later. It seems that adults read Thursday's Child and talk about it without any reference to young readers; we see it as one of those books you read and immediately look for someone to discuss it with. And then go back to the book to reread. It's one of those novels that, like many poems, offers multiple readings and the reader may be content to accept several of them. The UK editors of this journal wanted to bring this intriguing novel to the notice of readers who may not yet have discovered it, and, we felt sure, those who already knew the book would welcome two close readings to set alongside their own. We invited Judith Armstrong to begin the discussion. Then David Rudd, with the benefit of Judith's insights, adds his exploration of the novel. Between the two essays, we have included some comments, extracted from a taped conversation, of two 14-year-old readers. This article comprises two sustained responses to Sonya Hartnett's award-winning novel, Thursday's Child. Both essays explore multiple readings of a complex and intriguing text. Set in the Great Depression in Australia, the novel is seen as at once realistic, mythic, and even fantastic. Judith Armstrong considers Tin, the subject of the title, as a feral child and examines his influence on the other members of his family. As he tunnels through the earth, so does the narrator Harper (Tin's older sister) “dig” with her pen. Their excavations leave both children forever marked by the bleak and sometimes violent events recorded in the book. David Rudd continues the discussion, finding Freud's exploration of “the uncanny” and J. M. Barrie's character, Peter Pan, illuminating in his reading of the novel. He also asks how far Harper can be trusted as narrator: can we even be certain that her brother survived a mudslide that occurred early in the story?