Pedagogical Stance Research Articles

Secondary Social Studies Teachers’ Experiences Planning and Implementing Inquiry Using the Inquiry Design Model

While the use of inquiry-based instruction has been encouraged for many years, it continues to be the exception rather than the norm. The publication of the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework, as well as the Inquiry Design Model that provides structure for its implementation, offer support for teachers to use inquiry in their social studies classrooms. This phenomenological study used semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and document analyses to explore three secondary social studies teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge as they planned and implemented inquiries. Findings indicate that teachers found a structured method of designing inquiries useful and that their approaches to planning and implementing those inquiries varied with individual context and personal pedagogical stances. There is no one-size-fits-all inquiry, even when teachers used the same support tool.

On Grades and Instructor Identity: How Formative Assessment Saved me from a Midlife Crisis

In recent years, I have cultivated an almost pathological resistance to grading. Here I explore the reasons why and describe how I eventually recovered. In particular, I propose that although grading, or more explicitly, effective assessment of student learning, is a challenging component of a mathematics instructor’s job description, reflective use of formative assessment can substantially relieve the pressure, as it allows the instructor to focus on what matters most: student learning and growth. To this end, I describe my experiences with formative assessment in a diverse selection of courses (ranging from calculus to introduction to proofs to mathematics for liberal arts). I conclude that formative assessment can help an instructor move toward a more intentional pedagogical stance, and a more constructive professional identity.

Community Mapping as a Tool for Developing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

ABSTRACTDespite more than two decades of research supporting the use of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) to increase academic outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse students, teacher education programs continue to struggle with helping preservice teachers to develop this pedagogical stance. This article explores the process and outcomes of a class community mapping project as a pedagogical method for developing CRP with early childhood preservice teachers. Using culturally relevant pedagogy to frame our investigation, we report our findings on the impact of the community mapping project on the preservice teachers’ development of CRP as it relates to the theory’s pedagogical tenets of conceptions of self and others, social relations, and conceptions of knowledge. The findings suggest that community mapping is comprehensive in that it incited new understandings and beginning beliefs about each dimension of CRP.

Investigación-acción-jurídica: escenarios para una investigación activa y crítica en el Derecho

This work aims at presenting the reader the common features that outline the concept of action research, not only to establish the basic elements that describe this research model, but also to establish a rough look that allows a critical review from the pedagogical stance in order to establish theoretical and practical tools that enable the construction of a scenario for their legal application. The approach for this study, besides being reflective, will tend to establish a dialectic confrontation between reality and communities so as to achieve a response in the practical experience of the researcher. To do so, two main topicswill be expounded: (i) action research: common elements for a critical discussion; and (ii) action-research applied to legal research.

Technological Review of Higher Education Student Engagement Enhancement Using the Facebook Social Networking Site (SNS)

Can the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, help engage with the ‘hard to reach’ students within the Higher Education learning environment? The vast majority of Generation Z students are actively engaged with social networking on a daily basis. This suggests the idea, from a pedagogical stance, that social networking may be an effective tool for engaging with students, given its evident widespread use. Considering the use of Facebook presents a range of advantages and challenges in its integration into the classroom and wider student learning experience. The adoption of Facebook is largely positive, if conducted with careful consideration of a range of underlying concepts. This piece presents the author’s views, following a variety of research he has undertaken since 2012 into the use of social networking within the learning environment.

The Power of Parent Engagement: Sociocultural Considerations in the Quest for Equity

This article explores the difference between parental involvement, where parents' activity levels at school are primarily structured by schools, and parental engagement, where parents have a more active voice in how they take part in what goes on in schools. This difference is underscored as a means of illuminating ways of addressing the issue of racialized disproportionality in special education and acts of school discipline, particularly in urban settings. We highlight the ways schools need to transform the often microaggresively oppressive ways parents are invited into their children’s education process, as well as the way schools value the knowledge parents bring. Effective ways of activating parental engagement as a means of creating authentic community engagement are also examined. Additionally, recommendations are provided on how to prepare novice teachers to develop plans and goals alongside parents in order to help these new educators develop a pedagogical stance that authentically values the importance of one of schools’ most important stakeholders–parents.

The Power Game: Power Dynamics between the Teacher and the Students in a Graduate Seminar

This study investigated power relations in a graduate seminar on Literacy learning and knowledge acquisition. Three categories were examined in relation to ideological assumptions: students’ expectations, institution’s expectations, and teachers’ perceptions of their roles as guided by their teaching perspectives. The study aimed at identifying how those aspects shaped by ideological perspectives influenced the interviewed teachers’ viewpoints about power dynamics. It also addressed the dominance of the mainstream norms over those of the minority students coming from different cultures. The issue of voice in relation to diversity was discussed as an important factor that shaped power relations in classroom discourse. A critical perspective was adopted throughout the paper with the purpose of advocating a pedagogical stance that would encourage the empowerment of students and build upon their diversity. Through the study of field notes and audio tapes of interviews and classroom interactions, three main factors seemed to have contributed to teachers’ perceptions of power relations within classroom settings. The factors were: students’ expectations, institutions’ expectations, and teachers’ perceptions of their roles. Regarding issues of voice, participants seemed to have come to a consensus concerning reasons that might have led to persistence on teachers’ part to students’ conformity to mainstream norms, which they explained in terms of limitations in most teachers training in dealing with diversity.

The Impact of Transdisciplinary Threshold Concepts on Student Engagement in Problem-Based Learning: A Conceptual Synthesis

There has been much recent discussion about student engagement in higher education, and in the last few years a number of authors have undertaken extensive international research on the topic, which has been summarized in a number of literature reviews. However, to date, there has been relatively little in-depth exploration of student engagement in problem-based learning (PBL) or the impact of different forms of engagement on distinct forms of PBL. Drawing on a number of studies over the last 15 years, this paper argues that student engagement in PBL can be troublesome as both a concept and a practice. It also suggests there are 4 transdisciplinary threshold concepts that have an impact on student engagement with PBL: liminality, scaffolding, pedagogical content knowledge, and pedagogical stance. The paper argues that by acknowledging these transdisciplinary threshold concepts and working with them, facilitators will be able to enhance student learning in PBL across disciplines, contexts, and diverse forms of PBL.

Analysing Mathematics Teachers’ TPACK Through Observation of Practice

Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) has been well accepted as a framework to understand and describe types of knowledge required by teachers to teach specific content with technology effectively. However, limited studies have used the framework in analysing the complexity of technology integration in mathematics classrooms. This study investigates, through examining critical instructional events, the most influential TPACK constructs in understanding and shaping teachers’ pedagogical practices using digital technology. This case study was conducted in an early secondary mathematics classroom in Indonesia that used a web-based resource to support students’ understanding of fractions. The finding suggests that the qualitative examination of the four intersected TPACK constructs assists in understanding the challenges and the opportunities to teachers when utilising an exploratory-based technology. It demonstrates that the combination of pedagogical stances and choice of technology significantly influence the visibility of other TPACK constructs. Implications of this study include the need of thoughtful planning prior to using web-based resources and the importance to utilise critical events in developing and assessing teachers’ TPACK.

Real Lives, Relevant Texts: A Survey of B2G Children’s Counternarratives

Abstract In recent years, natal males’ assertions of being girls born in the wrong body have been unwelcome in elementary scholastic contexts. Several reasons call for individuals who teach or plan to teach young children to know about boy-to-girl (B2G) performance counternarratives. First, there is increasing visibility of B2G lives among elementary schoolchildren. Second, B2G performance counternarratives have empathetic impact with the potential to reshape educators’ views regarding schoolchildren’s embodiment and sexuality. Third, B2G performance counternarratives are increasingly present in children’s literature. Collectively, these reasons contribute to a “queer-eye pedagogical stance” capable of fostering empathy for B2G perspectives. This discussion on B2G performance counternarratives is the result of a three year examination. The 28 children’s picture storybooks put forth convey a range of B2G lived experiences – some of which feature classroom teachers. Ideally, these narratives – lived and in literature – will position actual teachers to become responsive to B2G schoolchildren in physical classrooms.

A Case Study of Infusing Technology into Pre-service Secondary Science Teacher Learning: Conceptions and Attitudes While Navigating Changing Digital Landscapes

The impact of technology on student learning, achievement, motivation, and engagement is well documented; however, little research exists on how educators navigate their changing roles within a technologically enabled classroom. Authors explored how effective and appropriate use of classroom technology based on pre-service teachers’ needs and connected to STSE and STEM curriculum can be modeled. This research focused on the preparation of pre-service teachers ( n =48) for Grade 6–12 Science teaching in Canada at a small undergraduate university and included how their course professor infused more knowledge of , in , and for practice within the science classroom. Results indicate a need for critical awareness of the processes of learning in 21st century classrooms, an understanding of how technology can enhance students’ achievement, and a value of invested time and effort into the process. Discussion surrounding challenges and tensions, and suggestions to support emerging pedagogical stances of 21st century educators are provided.

Problematic Representations of Strategic Whiteness and “Post-racial” Pedagogy: A Critical Intercultural Reading of The Help

The Help is argued to influence understandings of racial histories, racial in/equality, and interracial coalitions from a pedagogical stance invested in the re/production of white dominance. This essay mobilizes strategic whiteness to map the representational strategies utilized to secure the superiority of whiteness and further the momentum of “post-racial” ideology. Facilitated via white female characters, The Help's cinematic centralization of whiteness and redemption of white racists are illuminated as manifestations of strategic whiteness that operate at the expense of black women.

Applying attachment theory to effective practice with hard-to-reach youth: the AMBIT approach

Adolescent Mentalization-Based Integrative Treatment (AMBIT) is a developing approach to working with “hard-to-reach” youth burdened with multiple co-occurring morbidities. This article reviews the core features of AMBIT, exploring applications of attachment theory to understand what makes young people “hard to reach,” and provide routes toward increased security in their attachment to a worker. Using the theory of the pedagogical stance and epistemic (“pertaining to knowledge”) trust, we show how it is the therapeutic worker’s accurate mentalizing of the adolescent that creates conditions for new learning, including the establishment of alternative (more secure) internal working models of helping relationships. This justifies an individual keyworker model focused on maintaining a mentalizing stance toward the adolescent, but simultaneously emphasizing the critical need for such keyworkers to remain well connected to their wider team, avoiding activation of their own attachment behaviors. We consider the role of AMBIT in developing a shared team culture (shared experiences, shared language, shared meanings), toward creating systemic contexts supportive of such relationships. We describe how team training may enhance the team’s ability to serve as a secure base for keyworkers, and describe an innovative approach to treatment manualization, using a wiki format as one way of supporting this process.

Demarketing of Higher Education - Thinking Out of the Box or Out of Focus?

Objectives - The purpose of this paper is to highlight the strategies being undertaken by higher education institutions (HEIs) to leverage their bottom-line especially in situations where public funding has been removed and they are left with no other option but self-funding. Strategies have ranged from internationalisation i.e. setting up overseas branch campuses; aggressive recruitment drive for international students; and launch of new programmes to attract a wider market i.e. by demarketing the traditional course provisions in a bid to think out-of-the-box.Prior Work - The 2014 book entitled edited by Nigel Bradley and Jim Blythe featured an assemblage of demarketing variants - from general to selective, and ostensible to unintentional. The new course launches like the bold attempt at the University of Missouri on the relationship between hip hop artists opens the discourse on the future trajectory of higher education. Are HEIs following the market demand? Demarketing traditional provisions? Desperate for survival by reaching out to a previously disinterested audience? Should they?Approach - This exploratory study is based on a documentary analysis of the debate on the future of curriculum development in HEIs in general and using the exemplar of an unconventional course launch – notably “English 2169: Jay-Z and Kanye West,” at the University of Missouri, as a case illustration.Results - The main results show that instructors have, in the past, based their syllabi on celebrities - from Georgetown University’s sociology department offering a class on “Sociology of Hip-Hop - Urban Theodicy of Jay-Z” in 2011, to Julius Bailey's academic textbook “The Cultural Impact of Kanye West” forthcoming in 2014. Similarly, the University of South Carolina offered a course on “The Sociology of Fame and Lady Gaga” in 2009, and the department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers offered a course revolving around Jay Z’s wife, “Politicizing Beyonce” in 2012. The University of California Berkeley students could once take a philosophy class based on The Simpsons.Implications - The persuasive arguments advanced by the institution, in an attempt to justify the course launch revolves around “…likening the academic study of hip hop now to the study of film back when movies were still seen as ‘trash for the masses,’” and the need to think out of the box. Evidently, an attempt has been made to capture the relationship between hip hop artists and poetry, as well as optimism enshrined in the American Dream and the attendant “Audacity of Hope”. Meanwhile, these endeavours and the accompanying pedagogical stance still raise some interesting questions on the extent of utility associated with such offerings.”

Does competitive sport have educational validity in physical education?

Across Europe, competitive sport is increasingly seen as an important element in a physical education curriculum. The negative association surrounding the playing of sports at youth or adult level raises serious questions about the validity of increasing competitive sport in schools. On the other hand, it is argued that this negative association is something that needs to be addressed in schools as part of the educational process. In this paper, I shall portray the negative and positive associations with competitive sport and I shall also address the taken-for-granted values claimed for sport. In presenting this case, I shall propose that a major rethink about the value of competitive sports in schools is needed. This will be followed by an analysis of what is meant by educational validity and an outline of what criteria could be used to select appropriate curricula content? A number of questions will be raised whether current practice can meet these standards. Education has made strong claims about capacities and dispositions that can be nurtured and cultivated during schooling. So to name a few, autonomy, empowerment and agency, independence, responsibility, resilience and imagination are seen as important but rarely addressed in physical education. Their relevance will be explored in the context of physical education and sport. In this process, the implications of an educational validity and a pedagogical stance for competitive sport will be identified and outlined.

LITERATURA, EDUCAÇÃO E ALTERIDADE - A ESCRITURA COMO EXPERIÊNCIA DE FORMAÇÃO

This article's research object is relationship between and education. Our position of teacher-researcher is one that authorizes us to collect testimonies of teaching experience, as well as extract interrogative elements from all of margins, challenging us to think about power of encounter between the aesthetic experience of literature and discourse. Some studies have pointed us to intriguing relationship between and education inviting protagonists and viewers of everyday school scene to begin with other modes of existence, thus producing a repositioning of narratives and enunciation of discourses that constitute them. In company of authors such as Giorgio Agambem, Walter Benjamin, Clarice Lispector and Roland Barthes, we challenge ourselves to explore topics such as language, childhood and otherness that push us to think of symbolic framing of existential experience through literature. We assume a pure commitment to place of educational development in our research, understanding it as a continuous and uninterrupted work on oneself, effect of a certain language of creation, a poetic writing. Our hypothesis is that presence of in school setting serves to decenter role of teacher, applying important modifications that alter contours that form supposed pedagogical stance invested in knowledge-power relationship. We are led to believe that when we open ourselves up to practices of writing, reading and storytelling happens (to us) and this something brings important contributions to remaking contours of pedagogical field we are inserted in.

Beginning teachers and diversity – why the need for extended critical professional support

This article draws from a qualitative study of seven beginning teachers’ perceptions of diversity over a period of 6–18 months. The study found that while initial teacher training had broadened their understanding of diversity and its implication for teaching, it was established pedagogical practices in their schools that influenced the novices’ ongoing understanding of responsiveness to learner diversity. For these novices, the influence of the structures and systems of their school contexts began to restrict their pedagogical stance. Based on the reported findings and wider research data, the article argues the need for ongoing critical professional support for beginning teachers who can deepen their understanding of learner diversity and its pedagogical implications. It underscores the importance of a genuine partnership between schools and teacher education providers to enable the continuation of critical professional support for novices, particularly in contexts where there are no mandatory links between preservice programmes and beginning teaching like New Zealand, where this study was undertaken. The author contends that it is unrealistic otherwise to expect beginning teachers not only to challenge entrenched practices but also to sustain the efforts of initial teacher education programmes in preparing them to be responsive to diverse learners.

Toward a Race Pedagogy for Black Faculty

Educators are consciously or unconsciously guided by pedagogy and make critical decisions about praxis—content, strategy, structure—based on their pedagogical beliefs. The intentional use of pedagogy is often advanced as a key to being an effective educator. A wealth of literature is directed toward helping White educators develop a race pedagogy, but the authors argue Black educators who teach courses about race face unique challenges and should develop a pedagogical stance consistent with that reality. In this article, the authors analyze different strategies as evidence that Black faculty struggle to develop a pedagogy for teaching race. The authors argue for a purposeful, engaged pedagogy, and contextually informed pedagogy that sets conditions wherein both the educator and student take risks in exposing their authentic self and positionality.

Expansive learning: lessons from one teacher’s learning journey

The provision of quality learning experiences for teachers is critical to mathematics reform agendas aimed at equitable and culturally responsive teaching. In this paper we use an activity theory framework to explore one teacher’s learning journey. Drawing on the teacher’s self-report of his journey 1 year after his participation in an intervention designed to support the introduction of mathematical inquiry practices we examine those factors that supported expansive learning. In seeking to understand our pedagogical stance within the intervention we gained new insights into the provision of research based tools to support learning, the provision of space for individual and collective learning, and the provision of a safe learning environment both within the programme, the class, and the wider professional community. These factors are important in understanding transformational changes associated with ambitious pedagogy.

High School Students’ Exposure to Diversity in an Urban Teaching Academy and Their Conceptions of Its Place in Future Practice

This study explored the meaning high school Urban Teaching Academy participants ascribed to the critical term of diversity and how that translated into shaping their philosophies on how to address the issue in their future classrooms. Findings indicated that perceptions of diversity and its place in the curriculum were most likely related to the emphasis of the concept in the program. Thus, those participants who were taught by a teacher who included more discourse on the topic of diversity embraced a culturally relevant pedagogical stance. Whereas, those participants taught by a teacher who discussed diversity through the lens of differentiated instruction adopted a color-blind perspective.