Practical Craft Research Articles

The craft of intervention: A personal practical theory for a teacher's within-group interactions

There is a dearth of literature that describes the personal practical theories or professional craft knowledge of experienced elementary school teachers of science. Reports of teachers' classroom thinking and their personal practical theories might help other teachers and student teachers identify possibilities for action in their own classroom contexts. The subject of the current research was an experienced provocateur–teacher who was committed to establishing and maintaining a dynamic learning community within his classroom. His theory for science learning and teaching during teacher–student interactions was inferred from data framed from classroom observations, teacher–student discourse, and stimulated recall interviews. The teacher's instructional moves were very much interrelated with the components of his personal practical theory that were themselves underpinned by his knowledge of self, students, pedagogy, curriculum, and science. Possible extensions of this research are identified.

Transformation of the analog: the case of the Saab BT 33 artillery fire control simulator and the introduction of the digital computer as control technology

This paper is about the development of modern artillery fire control simulators. The Saab BT 33 had few equals when it was operational in the early 1970s. The accounts describe the introduction of the digital computer and its victory over older control technologies during long-term social change. The case illustrates the role of engineering and craft in practice, ultimately to make the practice more controllable. The case also shows how piecemeal solutions risk becoming victims of technical innovations. The use of modern information technology for control and other purposes, only if socially accepted in its context within strong traditions, may be efficient.

Anne Bradstreet and Elizabeth Bishop: Nature, Culture and Gender in “Contemplations” and “At the Fishhouses”

Written in and for a patriarchal community that valued its solidarity, Anne Bradstreet's “Contemplations” does not try to render an accurate, realistic portrait of nature in the New World. Rather, it employs what Leo Marx calls “ecological images…displaying the essence of a system of value” and subordinates these images to the reformed Judeo-Christian myth. “Contemplations” argues that God is the source of order, meaning, and history, and that the natural world, whether beneficent or hostile, reflects His omnipotence. But in delineating a predominantly masculine world view, Bradstreet also sets aside her own aspirations as a woman poet. Although the song of the female bird Philomel represents a kind of art that is free of Puritanism's monolithic expectations, Bradstreet's speaker cannot liberate herself to sing with Philomel. Instead, she stifles her own song for a practical poetic craft that serves her struggling community.

The Game of Logic

MR. “LEWIS CARROLL'S” new book has both the merit and the sterility which might be expected from a fresh and rather independent system of diagrammatic or visual logic. That is to say, it is ingenious and closely worked out, but cannot be said to advance either our theoretic knowledge of reasoning processes or the more practical craft of dealing with assertions and arguments as found in ordinary life. Perhaps so trying a standard ought not in fairness to be applied to the work before us, which is intended—so the preface and the title hint—to amuse those who would otherwise play with some less instructive puzzle. But it is because it seems unlikely that “The Game of Logic” will be patiently studied as a game, or would reward such patience by providing “an endless source of amusement,” that one is inclined to consider it rather as a contribution to visual logic than to any other form of literature. The Game of Logic. By Lewis Carroll. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1887.)