Mathematics in and through social justice: another misunderstood marriage?

The current push to marry off mathematics with social justice compels one to ask such critical questions as “What is social justice?” and “How does (or can) mathematics look and act when viewed in/through the lenses of social justice?” Taking a critically reflective approach, this article draws the reader into a discussion of what is amiss in the currently promoted picture-perfect marriage of mathematics and social justice, presenting perspectives on both the content and context of mathematics teaching and learning. In this article, the author’s account of her experience in teaching a mathematics curriculum course for prospective middle years' teachers highlights a call to re-imagine the relationship between mathematics and social justice as more than a perfunctory integration of a “statistics and figures” approach. The author’s reflections acknowledge the complexity and potentiality of the relationship while challenging current status quo practices and paradigms in mathematics education.     

Framing the framework: discourses in Australia’s national values education policy

In the past, many Australian state schools avoided teaching about values explicitly. However, the Australian government released Australia’s first official values education policy in 2005: the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (NFVEAS). This framework represents a local manifestation of the recent international values education movement. This study contributes to an exploration of what, and who, the government’s construction of Australian values privileges. It uncovered the dominant discourses inherent in the framework through a critical discourse analysis, framing it in relation to the 16 key values education approaches identified in the literature. The data revealed the document’s strong privileging of conservative values education discourses, particularly civics and citizenship education, values inculcation and character education. In practice, some Australian schools have been disrupting this move to conservatism by taking more critical and postmodern approaches. The paper argues for such alternative practices and policy that is more diversified and student-centred.     

Web site credibility: Why do people believe what they believe?

This research investigates university students’ determinations of credibility of information on Web sites, confidence in their determinations, and perceptions of Web site authors’ vested interests. In Study 1, university-level computer science and education students selected Web sites determined to be credible and Web sites that exemplified misrepresentations. Categorization of Web site credibility determinations indicated that the most frequently provided reasons associated with high credibility included information focus or relevance, educational focus, and name recognition. Reasons for knowing a Web site’s content is wrong included lack of corroboration with other information, information focus and bias. Vested interests associated with commercial Web sites were regarded with distrust and vested interests of educational Web sites were not. In Study 2, credibility determinations of university students enrolled in computer science courses were examined for 3 provided Web sites dealing with the same computer science topic. Reasons for determining Web site inaccuracy included own expertise, information corroboration, information design and bias. As in Study 1, commercial vested interests were negatively regarded in contrast to educational interests. Instructional implications and suggestions for further research are discussed. Preliminary results from Study 1 were presented as a poster entitled “Users’ Confidence Levels and Strategies for Determining Web Site Veracity” (Iding et al. 2002a) and appeared in associated proceedings for The WWW 2002: The Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Preliminary results from Study 2 were presented as a paper entitled, “Judging the Veracity of Web Sites” (Crosby et al. 2002) and appeared in associated proceedings for the International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE 2002) in Auckland, New Zealand.     

Participatory Action Research and Critical Race Theory: Fueling Spaces for Nos-otras to Research

Drawing on the intersections of a justice oriented participatory action research and critical race theory, this essay explores the possibilities for research embedded in the theoretical, ethical and methodological overlaps between the two. Using the Echoes project as a case study, a participatory collective of intentionally diverse youth from New York and New Jersey brought together in the long shadow of Brown, to document and perform educational injustice in their schools, the essay asks social scientists what it means to engage research that takes seriously the idea of mutual implication, or what Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera, The New Mestiza, 1999) calls nos-otras—whereby research is designed to seek knowledge at the nexus of everyday lived experience and intricate social systems; to ask questions that allow individuals to hold multiple, even opposing, identities; to provoke analyses that requires historical re-memory; to destabilize naturalized power hierarchies. Research that calls for socially engaged questions that demand to be answered collectively through research and action.

Celebrating Jhumki Basu’s contributions to science education as a scholar and an activist: voices from the field

This metalogue addresses the ways Sreyashi Jhumki Basu mediated our practices in science education and life. We focus on Basu’s uses of critical science agency, democratic science classrooms, and critical feminist ethnography to transform the possibilities for all participants in her research and educational practices. We also examine her use of cases and pedagogical strategies to support youth set practice goals based on conceptions of self and preferred learning trajectories. These strategies allow youth to develop power through the use of disciplinary knowledge and modes of inquiry to support their understanding of themselves as powerful, able to change their position in the world, and make the world more socially just. This (Key Contributors) article acknowledges a life cut short through disease, reflects our personal loss of a friend and colleague, and expresses determination to ensure that her contributions to science education are sustained and continued.

辅时及物——林纾古文创作述论

林纾因翻译西洋小说而声名鹊起,他的译作受人推崇,很大程度上是因为其深厚的古文根底。综观林纾《畏庐文集》《畏庐续集》《畏庐三集》,他以重理尚情为主旨,传承儒家之道,揭露社会痼疾,抒发个人情志,而其中的创作方法亦多与《春觉斋论文》中所论述的古文理论大体相契合。通过选择其中有代表性的篇目加以分析,阐明林纾古文的创作成就。     

f(x)的一致连续性研究

对f(x)的一致连续性作了较系统的讨论,得到了一些重要结论。     

批判性思维及其在新闻评论创作中的应用

批判性思维是当今国际公认的认识现实生活中各样事物的理想思维方式,本文介绍了批判性思维的一般特征,并对比中国人的传统思维方式,探讨了批判性思维对新闻评论创作的基本要求。     

回顾与反思广告中的“中国元素”

本文在回顾与反思进入新世纪以来,中国元素广告实践和研究从自发到自觉重要转变的基础上,试从批判性的视角,以批判+建构整体思路切入研究主题,以期逐步实现中国元素实践和研究从自觉到自省的二次转变,真正发挥中国元素对中国乃至世界政治、经济文化和谐发展的促进作用。     

Critical thresholds for co-citation clusters and emergence of the giant component

The behavior of co-citation clusters is studied over a wide range of similarity values, and we demonstrate the existence of critical or percolation transitions marked by a sudden expansion of cluster size with a small decrease in similarity which, in most cases, reflects the emergence of a giant component on the overall graph for the dataset. The study was motivated by the question of how to set appropriate thresholds for delineating individual research areas that identify, as far as possible, natural boundaries, in view of the fact that a threshold or criterion appropriate for one area may not be appropriate for another. We explore the rate of change in cluster size as a possible boundary indicator. The relationship of this critical behavior to maps of science is discussed.