Teachers’ and children’s personal epistemologies for moral education: Case studies in early years elementary education

While there is strong interest in teaching values in Australia and internationally there is little focus on young children’s moral values learning in the classroom. Research shows that personal epistemology influences teaching and learning in a range of education contexts, including moral education. This study examines relationships between personal epistemologies (children’s and teachers’), pedagogies, and school contexts for moral learning in two early years classrooms. Interviews with teachers and children and analysis of school policy revealed patterns of relationships between personal epistemologies and pedagogies within each school. A whole-school approach to understanding personal epistemologies and practice for moral values learning is suggested.     

Civil defence pedagogies and narratives of democracy: disaster education in Germany

‘Disaster education’ is a fledgling area of study in lifelong education. Many countries educate their populations for disasters, to mitigate potential damage and loss of life, as well as contribute to national security. In this paper, which draws on interview data from the German Federal Office for Civil Defence and Disaster Assistance and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief, archival research, analysis of websites and promotional materials as well as relevant academic literature, I examine disaster education and preparedness for national emergencies in Germany. I argue that it is not generally extended to the general public, rather confined to trained experts, decentralised, localised and exclusive. Theorising disaster education as a ‘civil defence pedagogy’, a type of public pedagogy, which contributes to shaping narratives of national identity, I argue that it is unlikely that Germany will develop a more inclusive, universal, formalised nor high-profile campaign in disaster education in the foreseeable future. This, I suggest, is due to narratives of the German democratic nation as secure, federal, peaceful and unified, which originated at the founding of West Germany in 1949, and continue to shape contemporary political narratives.     

Interdisciplinary Synergy: A Partnership Between Business and Library Faculty and Its Effects on Students’ Information Literacy

In today's information-rich environment, business faculty are challenged to teach students how to conduct effective business research and evaluate information critically. We describe collaboration between business professors and reference librarians in an introductory business course. Students were surveyed before and after completion of a Business Discovery Project requiring use of print and electronic sources in writing a research paper on a publicly traded company. Student perceptions indicated increased abilities in communication skills, research skills, use of business information sources, and composition skills; paired t tests showed these increases to be significant.     

Birth in an ordinary instant

Our daily lives are a series of ordinary moments and unnoticed thresholds-times that define us in ways we often do not give much attention. While we consider childbirth to be one of life's extra-ordinary events, the hours of labor and birth need not be dramatic (or traumatic) ones. I describe a quiet, well-supported birth in the Netherlands that is cause for celebration of the beauty of an ordinary instant that can define and enrich the human experience.     

Examining Boys’ Readings of Gender in the English Classroom

As an opinionated and often challenging class of year 10 boys, they demonstrated a strong sense of their identity as a group of ‘bright boys’. One of their English teachers described the class as ‘boisterous, but very motivated – they love discussing texts’, but she also recognised their tendency to ‘descend into testosterone fuelled competitiveness’. I became interested in the ways these boys read and responded to literature and in particular how their strong view of themselves as ‘bright boys’ influenced their reading of gender in literature. I examine two lessons with this year 10 class in which they discussed representations of gender in two literary texts. I was interested in the ways they constructed and asserted their masculine identities through class discussions about gender in literature and I found myself wondering: how do these boys read gender, and why do they read gender in these ways?     

Of Daffodils and Farmers: Literature,Agriculture Students and Ecological Awareness

In a small Midwestern liberal arts college, a class focusing on ‘Farming and Rural Life in Literature’ attracted a large number of agriculture students. Although many disliked and avoided reading, these students began to use literature as a way to understand the natural world, their role in it and the experiences they shared with other farmers half a world away. They were experiencing the transformative power of poetry that Thomas Auxter urges us to consider in his essay, ‘Poetry and Self‐Knowledge in Rural Life’. Many critics have argued that the structure of the traditional curriculum reinforces environmentally unsustainable beliefs and practices by discouraging both understanding and creative problem solving. Yet while they advocate for innovative cross‐disciplinary models, these critics pay little attention to the role of the humanities in developing the desired grasp of human interconnectedness. The students’ performance and testimony is persuasive evidence that the study of literature helps agriculture students cultivate greater appreciation of nature and their membership in a global community. Teachers of English, at all grade levels, should be aware that they can play a key role in encouraging ecological literacy in the generation of farmers who must confront the world’s environmental challenges and feed its burgeoning population.     

Promotion of self-regulated learning in classrooms: investigating frequency, quality, and consequences for student performance

An implication of the current research on self-regulation is to implement the promotion of self-regulated learning in schools. Teachers can promote self-regulated learning either directly by teaching learning strategies or indirectly by arranging a learning environment that enables students to practise self-regulation. This study investigates teachers’ direct and indirect promotion of self-regulated learning and its relation to the development of students’ performance. Twenty German mathematics teachers with their overall 538 students (grade 9) were videotaped for a three-lesson unit on the Pythagorean Theorem. Students’ mathematics performance was tested several times before and after the observed lessons. A low-inferent coding system was applied to assess the teachers’ implicit or explicit instruction of cognitive strategies (e.g., organisation), metacognitive strategies (e.g., planning), and motivational strategies (e.g., resource management). High-inferent ratings were used to assess features of the learning environment that foster self-regulation. Results reveal that a great amount of strategy teaching takes place in an implicit way, whereas explicit strategy teaching and supportive learning environment are rare. The instruction of organisation strategies and some features of the learning environment (constructivism, transfer) relate positively to students’ performance development. In contrast to implicit strategy instruction, explicit strategy instruction was associated with a gain in performance. These results reveal a discrepancy between the usefulness of explicit strategy instruction and its rare occurrence in classrooms.