Education research for the Anthropocene: the (micro)politics of researcher becoming (2017 Radford Lecture)

This lecture asks: How can education research address the big questions of our time, and what has politics got to do with it? It will trace moments and movements of researcher-(un)becoming to explore the (micro)politics of a lifetime of educational research. Politics is understood as both intimate and immense, as the intertwined politics of global conditions, and of the nation, with the intimately personal. It is about the researcher lives we all live. The approach was generated in a recent visit to Oulu, north Finland, where doctoral students asked me to present ‘tales’ of a researcher life. The lead student wanted to know how to manage a doctorate while raising three young children. As I have wandered back and forth over a lifetime of presentations, the shapes of key influences emerged. Relations with Aboriginal people and Country have been there since before the beginning, and are incorporated into my ways of being in the world. Feminist theories and their libidinal flows have been fundamental in shaping both my life and research, including their uneasy alliance with Aboriginal onto-epistemologies. Doctoral students have emerged as a strong generative force in my intellectual directions, moving me into all sorts of worlds I would never have entered otherwise. And finally, Place, the places where I have lived and worked have been the crucial grounding of my body and being, primal and prior, but also the basis of thought. In further elaborating these different influences, they culminate in the contemporary force of the Anthropocene, calling us to consider how the world is asking to be named, and how we can learn to be human differently, for the wellbeing of the planet. In developing this address into a paper, I have decided, in consultation with, and supported by the editor Nicole, to preserve its original content as far as possible. The knowledge contained in the address belongs with the oral performance and images as much as with the very few written words that were used in the powerpoint slides. A small selection of images is also included.     

Do Consonant Sonority and Status Influence Syllable-Based Segmentation Strategies in a Visual Letter Detection Task? Developmental Evidence in French Children

This article queries whether consonant sonority (sonorant vs. obstruent) and status (coda vs. onset) within intervocalic clusters influence syllable-based segmentation strategies. We used a modified version of the illusory conjunction paradigm to test whether French beginning, intermediate, and advanced readers were sensitive to an optimal “sonorant coda–obstruent onset” sonority profile within the syllable boundaries as a cue for a syllable-based segmentation. Data showed that children used a syllable-based segmentation that improved with reading skills and age. The results are discussed to support that the visual letter detection within pseudowords primarily and early relies on acoustic-phonetic cues within the syllable boundaries, whereas the syllable effect seems to be developmentally constrained by reading skills and age.     

The differential influence of instructional context on the academic engagement of students with behavior problems

The teacher–student interactions of 39 students exhibiting high externalizing behavior problems and 59 students exhibiting average behavioral adjustment from urban elementary schools were directly observed. Comparisons between these students within four different instructional contexts indicated that levels of student engagement were significantly related to both behavior and classroom context. Although teachers’ use of behavioral management strategies was minimal, it was significantly related to the type of instructional context in which it occurred. Findings are discussed in terms of how different instructional contexts place unique demands and offer distinct affordances for students with behavior problems. A more comprehensive understanding of the influence of these environmental contexts can allow teachers to scaffold task demands to bring them within the domains of the student's ability.     

A Tower of Babel: Standardizing Archival Terminology

Repeated calls to standardize archival terminology have long characterized the archival literature. This paper first looks at the characteristics of a profession, the place of terminology in the context of a body of professional knowledge, and the development of archival principles, before examining international and national efforts to develop standardized vocabularies. The paper concludes with an examination of the difficulties in standardizing archival terminology, and discusses suggestions in the most recent literature that some of these difficulties may be overcome with new approaches such as an increased understanding of cultural warrant, exploration of the possibilities of contextual terminology, a better understanding of the processes of standards development, and adoption of the methods of experts in terminology.     

SAQ,SSI and STSE education: defending and extending “science-in-context”

Cultural Studies of Science Education - Many scholars suggest that recent major science education initiatives apparently tied to intense economic competitiveness and growth have prioritized...