At the interface: academic history,school history and the philosophy of history

How history is learnt and taught must to some extent be shaped by conceptions of what history is. Historians tend to conceptualize what something is by investigating what it has been and what it has meant in different contexts. This article explains how a debate in the philosophy of history between positivism and intentionalism provided the context for history to be defined as a distinct school subject. It traces the epistemological underpinnings of history pedagogy over the past century, illuminating the close relationship between attempts in the philosophy of history to defend history’s disciplinary autonomy and the formulation of a disciplinary model of school history education. Eschewing a one-way account from the philosophy of history to the school history classroom, it attributes the interest of leading history educationalists to use philosophical analyses of history to an educational paradigm eager to distil the disciplinary essence of the school subjects. At the interface of academic history, school history and the philosophy of history, it describes a process whereby these separate threads became part of a common fabric, shaping conceptions of what it means and what it takes to be educated in history.     

The effects of dyad reading and text difficulty on third-graders’ reading achievement

This study replicated, with modifications, previous research of dyad reading using texts at various levels of difficulty (Morgan, 1997). The current project measured the effects of using above–grade-level texts on reading achievement and sought to determine the influences of dyad reading on both lead and assisted readers. Results indicate that weaker readers, using texts at two, three, and four grade levels above their instructional levels with the assistance of lead readers, outscored both proficient and less proficient students in the control group across multiple measures of reading achievement. However, the gains made by assisted readers were not significantly different relative to the various text levels. When all assessments were considered, assisted readers reading texts two grade levels above their instructional levels showed the most robust gains in oral reading fluency and comprehension. Lead readers also benefited from dyad reading and continued their respective reading developmental trajectories across measures.     

The Structure of Historical Inquiry

Abstract

History educators find themselves in the peculiar situation of wishing to introduce students to the history discipline while lacking a clear conception of the features intrinsic to historical inquiry across its various specialisations and subject matters. In affirming that no one methodological charter hangs in the corridors of academic history departments, we fail to provide an adequate justification for an education in history. The doctrine that history is an exercise in disciplined knowledge, a specific way of knowing, is weakened by disciplinary disquietude and dissimilitude. Three features impress themselves upon all who inquire into the past. In the learning and teaching of history, these three features assume a distinct structural shape. First, colligation consists in grouping the events and concepts to be studied according to their shared purposes. Second, historical distance, intimately tied up with tradition and collective memory, provides the means for identifying a past separate from the present to be studied in its own right. Third, reconstruction describes the process of supplying individual content to the general categories illuminated by the earlier stages. To work knowingly in this structure of historical inquiry offers no solutions to the problems of historical thinking, it is to work productively within these problems.     

‘Trust me,I do not know what I am talking about!’: The voice of the teacher beyond the oath and blasphemy

Educational theorists ranging from Ivan Illich to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons have described institutionalized schooling as a modernized, secular church, full of rituals, sacraments, and various incantations. For them, the function of the teacher as priest and schooling as baptism is highly problematic, separating education from the common world. As such, the educational theology of the school needs to be suspended in order for educational life to take on new meaning beyond the sacraments of learning. To further this line of inquiry, we turn to the work of Giorgio Agamben on the oath and its originary function of guaranteeing the truthfulness of language (‘sacrament of language’). Insofar as the oath is also operable in learning (in the voice of the teacher), we argue that such operability can be suspended through a dialogic practice called ‘community of infancy’, thereby making possible new, profane forms of educational life beyond baptism.     

Feeling Heard: Inclusive Education,Transformative Learning,and Productive Struggle

Developments in international inclusive education policy, including in prominent UN documents, often refer to the aim of a quality education for all. Yet, it remains unclear: What exactly is meant by quality education? And, under what conditions are quality educational experiences possible for all learners? In this essay, Diana Murdoch, Andrea English, Allison Hintz, and Kersti Tyson bring together research on inclusive education with philosophy of transformative learning, in particular John Dewey and phenomenology, to further the discussion on these two questions. The authors argue that teacher–learner relationships, of a particular kind, are necessary for fostering environments wherein all learners have access to quality educational experiences associated with productive struggle as an indispensable aspect of transformative learning processes. They define such relationships as “educational relationships that support students to feel heard.” In developing their argument, the authors first analyze the concept of productive struggle, an aspect of learning increasingly recognized in research and policy as an indicator of quality education. Second, they discuss three necessary, though not sufficient, conditions for the teacher to cultivate educational relationships that support students to feel heard. Third, they draw out connections between environments that support feeling heard and those that support productive struggle, and they discuss teachers' challenges and risk-taking in creating such environments. The authors close with a discussion of implications for international policy, practice, and research.     

Library Anxiety Among Undergraduates Enrolled in a Research Methods in Psychology Course

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which organized training on accessing library resources affects library anxiety. The researchers revised and used the Multidimensional Library Anxiety Scale created by D. J. Van Kampen-Breit, which was designed to assess an individual's perception of an academic library and the information search process. Participants were given a pretest prior to information literacy sessions and a posttest following these sessions. Data analysis suggests a significant decrease in students’ anxiety levels following information literacy training sessions. The results of this study were applied to C. C. Kuhlthau's Information Search Process model and have implications for librarians, instructors, and students regarding factors related to library anxiety and its effective management.     

THE SCHOOL AS AN EXCEPTIONAL SPACE: RETHINKING EDUCATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE BIOPEDAGOGICAL

A bstract .  In this essay, Tyson Lewis theorizes current lockdown practices, zero-tolerance policies, and No Child Left Behind initiatives in U.S. schooling by drawing on Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's analysis of the concentration camp and the state of exception. Agamben's theory of the camp provides a challenging, critical vantage point for looking at the ambiguities that emerge from the complex field of disciplinary procedures now prevalent in inner-city, low-income, minority schools, and helps to clarify what exactly is at stake in the symbolic and sometimes physical violence of schooling. Key to understanding the primary relation between camp and classroom is Agamben's framework of the biopolitical, which paradoxically includes life as a political concern through its exclusion from the political sphere. Here Lewis appropriates Agamben's terminology in order to theorize the biopedagogical, wherein educational life is included in schooling through its abandonment. For Lewis, the theory of the camp is necessary to recognizing how schools function and, in turn, how they could function differently.     

The Persistent Life of Oppression: The Unconscious,Power, and Subjectivity

The rise of standardization signals that Paulo Freire's critique of the banking concept of education continues to be relevant today. But Freire's theory of critical pedagogy has not gone without its critiques. On the one hand, the fact that these criticisms exist should not blind us to the fact that Freire's intention was to formulate an emancipatory pedagogy because of oppressive systems of education. On the other hand, we cannot continue Freire's project without heeding the warnings issued by these criticisms. In this paper, we address pressing issues concerning Freire's libratory pedagogy and the way it has been taken up by recent Marxist theorizing in education while at the same time maintaining the importance for thinking through an emancipatory pedagogy. We are clear: the real culprit in this situation is the persistent life of oppression itself. We utilize psychoanalysis and the theories of Michel Foucault in order to pinpoint and work through a specific problematic concerning Freire's theories – namely: oppression has an existence in the unconscious such that those who are oppressed form passionate attachments to the forms of power that oppress them. Indeed, such a problematic is not flattering for all who are concerned with forms of social oppression, but, we contend, that unless this problem is recognized and worked through, no real liberation is possible