Curriculum spaces for connecting to children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases

Elementary mathematics curriculum materials can serve as a lever for instructional change. In this paper, we promote a particular kind of instructional change: supporting teachers in learning to integrate children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases (MMKB), including children’s mathematical thinking and children’s home and community-based mathematical funds of knowledge, in instruction. A powerful means of supporting pre-service teachers in integrating children’s MMKB in instruction may be to scaffold teachers’ noticing of potential spaces in elementary mathematics curriculum materials for connecting to children’s MMKB and then developing practices for leveraging these spaces during instruction. We focus on existing and potential spaces in written curriculum materials, or curriculum spaces, so as to better support teachers in enacting curriculum that opens spaces for connecting to children’s MMKB.     

A Reply to Allchin's “Pseudohistory and Pseudoscience”

Science &; Education -     

Improving The Quality of Education Through School-Based Management: Learning From International Experiences

School-based management is being increasingly advocated as a shortcut to more efficient management and quality improvement in education. Research, however, has been unable to prove conclusively such a linkage. Especially in developing countries, concerns remain about the possible detrimental impact of school-based management on school quality; equity among different schools in the same system; the motivation of and relationships between principals and teachers; and financial as well as administrative transparency. The present study defines school-based management and, in view of its implementation in different world regions, examines some of its advantages and disadvantages. In particular, the author explores the strategies which must accompany school-based management in order to ensure a positive impact on quality. These are found to include (1) guaranteeing that all schools have certain basic resources; (2) developing an effective school-support system; (3) providing schools with regular information on their performance and advice on how they might improve; and (4) emphasizing the motivational element in the management work of the school principal.     

Décentralisation de l’éducation en Afrique francophone de l’Ouest : Réalités et défis au niveau local

International Review of Education - THE DECENTRALISATION OF EDUCATION IN WESTERN FRANCOPHONE AFRICA: LOCAL-LEVEL REALITIES AND CHALLENGES – For some years now, the process of decentralisation...     

A longitudinal study of state government homepage accessibility in Maryland and the role of web page templates for improving accessibility

It is well documented that government agencies, at all levels, continue to have problems ensuring that government web sites follow laws related to web accessibility for people with disabilities. Although there are a number of published studies on government web accessibility that are point-in-time, there are no published studies consisting of a longitudinal analysis of state-level government web site accessibility. This paper contributes to the research literature in three ways: 1) an accessibility inspection of 25 Maryland state government homepages in 2012 which involved 150 human inspections of web pages, 2) a comparison of the results from 2012 to a similar accessibility evaluation in 2009, and 3) a discussion of the role of a web page template, which was introduced in Maryland state government shortly after the 2009 evaluation. The data from this longitudinal evaluation leads to the conclusion that web page templates do tend to result in more accessible sites within state government.     

Promoting Pre‐experimental Activities in High‐school Chemistry: Focusing on the role of students’ epistemic questions

In high‐school chemistry the pre‐experimental phase of inquiry cycles often remains neglected. According to a procedural model, which is described in the text, this phase begins with an observation that stimulates students’ prior factual knowledge, the formulation of a research question for further elaboration (epistemic questions), the anticipation of a hypothetical answer, and the planning of experimental steps for deciding on the hypothetical answer. These activities were explicitly prescribed in an experimental group of 28 10th‐graders. Raising the quality of students’ epistemic research questions by providing structured help was a special focus of the intervention. Hypothesised motivational and cognitive effects were measured and compared with a group of 25 students (control group) who engaged in non‐structured pre‐experimental activities. The intervention provided to the experimental group resulted in stronger preferences for a more open and non‐recipe type of experimentation, in more intense cognitive activities (thoughts), and, most importantly, in increased skills for formulating causal epistemic questions. Supporting such procedural skills in classrooms may contribute to transforming labwork into intentional activities and students into active learners by helping them focus on further elaborating their knowledge.     

‘The first step is the two‐step’: hegemonic masculinity and dancing in a country‐western gay bar

Gay men are often rendered feminized males according to masculine, heterosexual ideologies. This research demonstrates that gay men are actually more creative and active agents in their gender performance, simultaneously resisting and reinforcing dominant ideologies around gender and sexuality. One context where the creative agency of gay men is readily prevalent is in their leisure. Leisure contexts, used to shift the goalposts of cultural domination, are important locations where both social control of individuals and social strategies for change are prevalent. Using ethnographic methods, the author investigated a country‐western gay bar to identify those practices that reveal how gay men shape and assign meaning to the bar as a leisure context, the structures that exist to facilitate and/or prohibit gendered practices, and how gay men negotiate hegemonic and counter‐hegemonic gendered practices. This paper focuses on two‐step dancing, the most visible and popular activity that occurs in this country‐western gay bar. Yet, despite its popularity, analysis and interpretation reveal that two‐stepping, a heterosexually based, gender‐defined activity, provides gay men with a unique recreational opportunity to both challenge and reinforce dominant gender and sexual ideologies.