Storylines in the physics teaching content of an upper secondary school classroom

ABSTRACT

Background: Physics is often seen as a discipline with difficult content, and one that is difficult to identify with. Socialisation processes at the upper secondary school level are of particular interest as these may be linked to the subsequent low and uneven participation in university physics. Focusing on how norms are construed in physics classrooms in upper secondary school is therefore relevant.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify discursive patterns in teacher–student interactions in physics classrooms.

Design and methods: Three different physics lessons with one class of students taught by three different teachers in upper secondary school were video-recorded. Positioning theory was used to analyse classroom interaction with a specific focus on how physics was positioned.

Results: We identified seven different storylines. Four of them (‘reaching a solution to textbook problems’, ‘discussing physics concepts in order to gain better understanding’, ‘doing empirical enquiry’ and ‘preparing for the upcoming exam’) represent what teaching physics in an upper secondary school classroom can be. The last three storylines (‘mastering physics’, ‘appreciating physics’ and ‘having a feeling for physics’) all concern how students are supposed to relate to physics and, thus, become ‘insiders’ in the discipline.

Conclusions: The identification and analysis of storylines raises awareness of the choices teachers make in physics education and their potential consequences for students. For example, in the storyline of mastering physics a good physics student is associated with ‘smartness’, which might make the classroom a less secure place in general. Variation and diversity in the storylines construed in teaching can potentially contribute to a more inclusive physics education.     

“根叔”的话语建构——以《记忆》为例

师道尊严,老师主导,学生悉听是传统师生关系的典型特征,＂根叔＂超越了这种固有的认知模式,实现了老师由严肃到随和的完美转型,学生从被动的接受者变成了主动地参与者。文章借助系统功能语言学理论、语域理论、语体理论、互文性策略以及再情景化理论,对华中科技大学李培根校长发表的2010届毕业典礼致辞进行批评性话语分析,在探讨＂根叔＂如何建构的同时,发现＂根叔＂作为一种典型的话语,建构了一种新型的师生关系,而这种新型师生关系的发展对整个和谐社会的建设,尤其是教育领域的和谐起到了一定的推动作用。     

The Narrative Authority of George Eliot in Middlemarch:An Analysis of Dorothea and Her Marriages

Middlemarch is considered Eliot's one of the most controversial novels. Most critics apply feminist criticism to unscramble the novel and draw that it's a comedown of feminist fight and a loss of feminist discursive authority for the protagonist Dorothea hides in the protection of marriage.The paper aims to employ the theory of feminist narratology to reinterpret Middlemarch. Through the analysis of the two marriages of Dorothea, the dissertation draws the conclusion that Eliot manages to win the discursive authority in a man-dominating era, and the authority is based on a dual voice-the voice of a woman writing in the name and company of men.     

超学科视域中的教育关怀——基于一例学生行为规范话语实践的话语批判

在批判话语学视域中,教育场域各种行为规范的话语实践隐蕴着规定与描写、信息与互动、形塑与改塑、理性与论证等特征性话语意涵。对行为规范的话语实践展开话语间性、话语次序、话语混杂等方面的超学科话语分析,凸显了现代教育中由于技治理性和管理理性的超常张扬而映现的“话语技术化”、“话语商品化”而展现出理性与生活的张力,也揭示了现代文明进程中科学世界通过“语境重置”对生活世界的“殖民化”以及人的“物化”危机。同时．对行为规范的话语实践进行批判性话语研究,能够鲜活地使我们对事物获取一种现象学意义上的原初、自明、本质、冥会于心的观察、理解与诠释。     

Educational psychologists’ constructions of sexuality and the implications for practice

Despite an underlying inclusion agenda, sexuality equality remains a low priority in education. Review of literature suggests the marginalization of sexual minority young people (SMYP) in schools. This study explores educational psychologists’ (EPs’) constructions of sexuality and the implications for practice. Discursive psychology was used to analyse semi-structured interview data from seven EPs. Multiple and context-dependent constructions of sexuality emerged from the study. The research suggested that participants oriented to the need to maintain a non-prejudiced position and managed tensions of accountability using rhetorical strategies and interpretive repertoires. Conclusions centre on the need for reflexive practice to challenge taken for granted assumptions regarding sexuality in education and psychology communities.     

Deconstructing the elephant and the flag in the lavatory: promises and problems of moral foundations research

Moral Foundations research offers rich promise, opening up key questions about how affect and cognition are integrated in moral response, and exploring how different moral discourses may supply meaning and valence to moral experience. Haidt and his colleagues also associate different discourses with different political positions. However I address three problematic areas. First to what extent Haidt has succeeded in transcending the traditional dichotomy of affect and cognition, and created an integrative model of how moral intuitions actually work. Second, the analysis of cultural processes is too limited; moral responses are discursive, contextualized and constructed. Third, the political spectrum is complex and diverse; to be truly useful, the research on Moral Foundations must avoid parochial US political concerns and models.     

Life skills for ‘real life’: How critical thinking is contextualised across vocational programmes

Background: This article presents an analysis of how critical thinking is contextualised in everyday teaching in three vocational education and training (VET) programmes: Vehicle and transport, Restaurant and management, and Health and social care.

Purpose: The main question addressed is: What knowledge discourses permeate different VET-contexts, and hence what kinds of opportunities for critical thinking do they offer students?

Method: The qualitative analysis draws on data from a four-year ethnographic project exploring learning processes that can be characterised as civic education in Swedish vocational education. The analysis presented here used data collected during 85 days of observations of teaching in six VET classes, interviews with 81 students and 10 teachers, and collected teaching material. To explore why some contextualisations provided more opportunities and encouragement for critical thinking than others, we applied Bernsteinian concepts of ‘horizontal and vertical knowledge discourses’ and ‘discursive gaps’.

Findings and conclusions: Overall, teaching that was observed focused primarily on ‘doing’. However, in all three programmes, the analysis identified that there were also situations that touched upon critical thinking. Three major themes were identified: critical thinking related to ‘Personal experiences’, ‘The other(s)’ and ‘Wider perspectives’. It appeared that the frequency and nature of such situations varied with the knowledge discourses permeating the programme. Furthermore, we discuss the manifestations of critical thinking in relation to the wider context of what Bernstein refers to as pedagogic rights; individual enhancement, social inclusion and development of the competence and confidence to participate in political processes.     

‘Hope in failure’: A Level students,discursive agency,post-feminism and feminism

This article begins with Pollock’s comment that Judith Butler ‘finds hope in failure’ and its aim is to explore what ‘hope in failure’ means in relation to A Level students’ engagements with post-feminism and feminism. The article grounds its argument in an exploration of how post-feminism and feminism intersect with sixth form students’ subjectivities through the educational practices of their second-year A Level subject-based research. The article analyses empirical instances of students’ discursive agency through Butler’s notions of performativity, citationality, excessive signification and resignification to consider the complex, multiple and creative ways in which sixth form students produce themselves as viable gendered subjects in relation to post-feminist and feminist discourses. The analysis considers both how discourse regulates and conditions students’ relations with post-feminism and feminism and how discourse contains the possibilities for the subject to refuse the refusal of feminism in popular culture. Through its analysis of how students use their discursive agency to claim a feminist identity, and how these uses constitute transgressive practices, the article explores the political significance of identifications with feminism in doing gender differently. It ends with an argument for the re-consideration of the apparently assured popular cultural ‘failure’ of feminism in post-feminist neoliberal times.     

支盘桩技术在复杂岩土地层中的工程应用探讨

本文基于地质构造复杂的太行山东麓山前冲积平原区域的实际情况,从地质状况分析、桩基础优化设计、施工要点等几个方面结合工程实际介绍了支盘桩工艺在复杂岩土地层工程的实际应用。工程研究表明,在复杂岩土地层的工程中采用支盘桩工艺可以在很大程度上降低施工难度,提高施工效率,降低工程造价,具有显著的技术、经济和环境效益。     

Disciplining the Future: A Critical Organizational Analysis of Internet Studies

This article provides a critical, cautionary stance toward the future structure of “Internet studies” as a field. A social constructionist reading of the process of organizing reveals the ways in which apparently obdurate structures are constructed and negotiated through everyday discursive practices. Subsequent structures and practices function ideologically to control organizational members in a concertive fashion by shaping and directing the conceptual frameworks for inquiry and action in a seemingly natural way. Definitions and metaphors construct conceptual boundaries of meaning for the field of inquiry, delimiting and protecting over time what counts as Internet and Internet studies. Over time, origins of knowledge are hidden within the structure of the organizations and a culture of unobtrusive control emerges. Unless radical measures are taken to reflexively interrogate everyday routines and habitual ways of talking in academic environments, the future field of Internet studies will not transcend the traditions of the academy but will be entrenched in and reproduce traditional structures and a traditional scholarly enterprise.