How commercial and “violent” video games can promote culturally sensitive science learning: some questions and challenges

In their paper, Mu?oz and El-Hani propose to bring video games into science classrooms to promote culturally sensitive ethics and citizenship education. Instead of bringing ??educational?? games, Mu?oz and El-Hani take a more creative route and include games such as Fallout 3^? precisely because they are popular and they reproduce ideological and violent representations of gender, race, class, nationality, science and technology. However, there are many questions that arise in bringing these commercial video games into science classrooms, including the questions of how students?? capacities for critical reflection can be facilitated, whether traditional science teachers can take on the role of using such games in their classrooms, and which video games would be most appropriate to use. In this response, I raise these questions and consider some of the challenges in order to further the possibility of implementing Mu?oz and El-Hani??s creative proposal for generating culturally sensitive science classrooms.     

Bringing a dialogue between Buddhist multilogicality and evolutionary science into the science classroom

Cultural Studies of Science Education - In the context of the science versus creationism debate, Elizabeth Watts thoughtfully explores Buddhism as a model of compatibility between science and...     

Emotional engagement,social interactions,and the development of an afterschool game design curriculum

This formative design study examines how a program curriculum and implementation was emergently (re)designed in dynamic relation to the expressed emotions of teachers and students. The context was a yearlong afterschool game design program for STEM learning at an urban and public all-girls middle school. Using Randall Collins’ (Interaction ritual chains, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004) sociology of emotions framework, our analysis of field notes and video data reveal how the original intended curriculum hindered the generation of positive emotions, mutual foci of attention, and feelings of group solidarity—factors important in the generation of successful group interactions. In response to teacher and student expressed emotions, we took these factors as a guide for redesigning the program curriculum and implementation in order to foster a more positive emotional climate and redirect students’ positive emotions toward engagement in learning goals. This study’s implications point to the possibilities for designing curricula and program implementations to engender more emotionally responsive environments for STEM learning.     

Buddhist and arts-based practices for addressing racial oppression: building upon Cleveland and Tobin’s mindfulness in education

Cultural Studies of Science Education - In this response to Richard Cleveland’s review of the Special Issue on Mindfulness in Education by Kenneth Tobin (Learn Res Pract 4(1):112–125,...