Pedagogical Questions Research Articles

Literature in Lower‐Level Courses: Making Progress in Both Language and Reading Skills

Abstract: This research project investigated the role of the literary text in intermediate reading instruction in an attempt to address the question of how instructors can integrate literary selections into all levels of language instruction. Specifically, the study examined one particular classroom environment and explored its relationship to our present understanding of the teaching of literature and reading comprehension. Using a qualitative research approach, the study investigated: (1) the interplay between “reading” and “literature” in the second language (L2) classroom; (2) the underlying beliefs and assumptions that the instructor and students bring into the classroom regarding literature and reading comprehension; and (3) how these underlying assumptions affect what occurs in class. A presentation of course goals, classroom roles, and class activities and tasks elucidates how each of these issues is influenced by the students' and instructor's conceptualization of the reading process. Suggestions are made to help language teachers incorporate literature into classroom instruction. Attention is also given to the Standards for Foreign Language Learning and to their implications for incorporating literary texts into an intermediate reading course.

The Best of Both Worlds: Teaching Basic Writers in Class and Online

Basic writing students and online learning are not necessarily an ideal match. In hopes of stimulating more conversation and research on how technology can best advance the basic writing curriculum, this article first classifies the problems students and faculty encounter when a basic writing class moves online and discusses the pedagogical questions these problems raise. It then presents ten categories of arguments for making the move despite the problems involved. The article concludes with a description of how and why a hybrid model, one in which students meet with their instructor in a classroom on campus every other week and work online during the off weeks, provides one means of minimizing potential problems while maximizing learning opportunities for basic writers. Linda Stine is a professor in the Master of Human Services Program at Lincoln University (PA), where she has taught computer-mediated writing courses for adult students since 1986. For the past two years, she has been using Web-CT to teach a semi-online basic writing class. She has presented papers on technology and writing instruction at CCCC and NCTE, and has published several articles on this topic. Her most recent publication is Classroom Re- sources for Instructors Using Foundations First, published by Bedford/St. Martin's. Computers and Basic Writers: The Issue

Contours ofReligion, Scholarship and Higher Education: A Review Essay

This article summarizes and comments on issues raised in Religion, Scholarship and Higher Education: Perspectives, Models and Future Prospects, a book which is the product of the Lilly Seminar on Religion and Higher Education. The first two sections of the book deal with faith in relation to the nature of the academy and to disciplinary inquiry. The article focuses mainly on the third section, entitled ‘Religious Perspectives on Teaching: Reflections on Practice’. The essays in this section, with one notable exception, fail to adequately tackle pedagogical questions concerning how students are taught and how their identities are shaped in schools and colleges. There is a noticeable drift in most of the essays in this section of the book away from the questions of teaching that provide the ostensible framework and back towards issues having primarily to do with disciplinary scholarship. This process appears to be aided and abetted by a tendency to think of teaching as basically a process of telling. These essays also fail to make reference to any existing work about pedagogy or from the discipline of education. Why this is important is because the relationship between religion and higher education cannot be adequately understood without more disciplined attention to distinctively pedagogical concerns. Reluctance to delve into pedagogy and questions of student formation is ultimately a reluctance to pursue the book's stated theme all the way to its conclusion.

Sociology and mass culture: Durkheim, Mills, and Baudrillard

In this concise and engaging work, Patricia Cormack investigates the broad cultural significance and relevance of academic sociology by examining its on-going relationship with modernity and mass culture. She bids us, rather than deny sociology's participation in culture, to see the discipline as informing ethical, epistemological and pedagogical questions. Through an examination of the writings of Emile Durkheim, C. Wright Mills and Jean Baudrillard, Cormack illustrates how their formulations of sociology as a cultural practice is rooted in the very mass culture that it studies. Central to the argument is a discussion of conceptual and rhetorical devices - .totems. and .tropes. - within social theory. In agreement with the three theorist subjects, Cormack posits that the social is a discursive artifact, becoming over time a .social fact., explaining and sustaining ordinary life. Durkheim treats the 19th century birth of sociology (in which he played a large part), as an intrinsic aspect of modern cultural consciousness. Mills advances this view further, treating the .Sociological Imagination. as part of and informing, mass culture. Baudrillard treats sociological reason as now equivalent to and inextricable from commonsense understandings of the culture it seeks to understand - rendering the sociological project essentially mute. Of value to social scientists, and theorists in particular, this is a specialized volume - a sociology of sociology - written at senior undergraduate or graduate level. It is intended as textually oriented ethnography, and thus presents a theoretical rather than empirical investigation of the relationship between sociology and culture.

Environmental Educators on the Web: Results of a National Study of Users and Nonusers

To better understand the needs of environmental education (EE) related to technology, it is important to know how those in the field currently use the technology. The author describes and compares users and nonusers of the World Wide Web in terms of use of the Web, comfort level, perceived barriers, and familiarity with dominant EE sites. A clear majority of the sample are Web users and have moderate levels of comfort with it, primarily concerning basic communiccations tasks. The findings provide insight into the development of training programs and resources for environmental educators in using the Web and offer opportunities for additional research that focuses on specific technology and pedagogical use questions.

Advancing the Scholarship of Teaching Through Collaborative Self-Study

Self-study research is a mode of scholarly inquiry in which teachers examine their beliefs and actions as educators and explore pedagogical questions. A three-phase model of collaborative self-study research is offered as a framework for university faculty to engage in self-study for the purpose of improving teaching and creating new knowledge.

Virtual Development and Virtual Geographies: Using the Internet to teach interactive distance courses in the global South

This paper evaluates the delivery and learning outcomes of an interactive postgraduate geography and development MSc programme taught partially over the Internet, to students living in some of the most connectivity-poor regions of the world. It focuses particularly on the experiences of course developers, tutors and students, with the distance strand of a Master's Programme pioneered by Royal Holloway, University of London, and IW:LEARN (International Waters Learning Exchange and Resource Network), a UNDP-implemented project of the Global Environment Facility. Issues of design and implementation are discussed, with particular reference to pedagogical and financial questions and the considerable technical and personnel difficulties encountered. Comparability of experience between distance and residential students forms a central concern.

Loyalty, harm and duty: PBL in a media ethics course

Upper division public relations students, like their colleagues in other fields of communication, often prefer an in-depth study of moral issues related to their own area of interest rather than the more broadly-based survey of problems that is generally offered in mass media ethics courses. That preference poses a pedagogical question for the course instructor: How does one teach to the various areas of mass media in sufficient depth, without sacrificing breadth? This essay discusses a variation of problem-based learning (PBL) as one possible solution to that educational conundrum. A project developed by a group of public relations students using the PBL method provides the focus of the discussion.

Enhancing foreign language tutors – In search of the golden speaker

In the past, educators relied on classroom observation to determine the relevance of various pedagogical techniques. Automated language learning now allows us to examine pedagogical questions in a much more rigorous manner. We can use a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) system as a base, tracing all user responses and controlling the information given out. We have thus used the Fluency system [Proceedings of Speech Technology in Language and Learning, 1998, p. 77] to answer the question of what voice a language learner should imitate when working on pronunciation. In this article, we will examine whether there should be a choice of model speakers and what characteristics of a model's voice may be important to match when there is a choice.

On the pedagogy of examinations in Hong Kong

We present a portrayal of the pressures exerted on Hong Kong students by the examination system. However, the examination experience in China should not be confused with the contemporary emphasis on examinations in North American schools. We involve both teachers and students in experiential writing with respect to their experiences of examinations. These writings provide opportunity for reflections about pedagogical questions and dimensions of examinations in Hong Kong schools and society. We describe the historical background, the functions and the nature of examinations in Hong Kong. It is in the context of an awareness of such cultural traditions and present day global pressures that teachers (and their students) may gain a more thoughtful pedagogical perspective.

Anniversary article. Classroom SLA research and second language teaching

In Lightbown (1985a), I summarized SLA research by stating ten generalizations which were consistent with the research to that date. I concluded that SLA research could not serve as the basis for telling teachers what to teach or how. One of the reasons for that was the limited scope of SLA research at that time. Another reason was that most of the research had not been designed to answer pedagogical questions. However, I suggested that SLA research was one important source of information which would help teachers set appropriate expectations for themselves and their students. In this paper, following a review of language teaching practices of the past fifty years, I reassess the ten generalizations in light of the considerable amount of classroom-based SLA research which has been carried out since 1985, especially that which has addressed pedagogical concerns in primary and secondary school foreign and second language classes. For the most part, this research tends to add further support to the generalizations, and this gives them greater pedagogical relevance. Nevertheless, I argue that teachers need to continue to draw on many other kinds of knowledge and experience in determining the teaching practices which are appropriate for their classrooms.

The culture of power and science education: Learning from Miguel

In this paper we begin a discussion around the need for science educators to understand the relationship between cultural and socioeconomic issues and the science education of inner-city students. We refer to the works of critical scholars in science, education, and sociology in order to help us deconstruct the relationship between sociopolitical agendas and the lack of opportunity in science education for students from lower socioeconomic inner-city enclaves. Through our ethnographic case study of a homeless family in a major metropolitan area in the Northeast, we frame our analysis through the pedagogical questions of representation of science through culture, socioeconomic status, and “culture capital.” We use this analysis to raise questions for further research on the significance of understanding, accessing, and critiquing the “culture of power” in science education. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 871–889, 2000

Effort to Pick Best Math Texts Denounced at Congressional Hearing

The math wars came to Capitol Hill last week. But the pedagogical question of how to improve elementary and secondary school math instruction took a back seat to the ideological debate over who should call the shots in publicly funded education.

The culture of power and science education: Learning from Miguel

In this paper we begin a discussion around the need for science educators to understand the relationship between cultural and socioeconomic issues and the science education of inner-city students. We refer to the works of critical scholars in science, education, and sociology in order to help us deconstruct the relationship between sociopolitical agendas and the lack of opportunity in science education for students from lower socioeconomic inner-city enclaves. Through our ethnographic case study of a homeless family in a major metropolitan area in the Northeast, we frame our analysis through the pedagogical questions of representation of science through culture, socioeconomic status, and ''culture capital.'' We use this analysis to raise questions for further research on the significance of understanding, accessing, and critiquing the ''culture of power'' in science education. fl 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 871-889, 2000

A De-programming Curriculum: Allied Reeducation and the Canadian-American Psychological Warfare Program for German POWs, 1943–47

The Canadian federal government, shut out of meaningful post-World War Two diplomacy by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, found few avenues to assert its separate Canadian identity in the immediate postwar era. The Canadian psychological warfare program for German POWs--influenced by pent-up official frustration (1)--was an attempt by the government of Prime Minister Mackenzie King to register its mark on thousands of German prisoners of war who lived in Canadian-operated POW camps during and after the war. Astounding is the fact that some POWs, intentionally cut off from the outside world, asked on 8 May 1945 which side had won the war. (2) The United States and the United Kingdom sought to influence the thinking of the Germans following World War Two, especially because of German confusion about the causes of their defeat in World War One. In fact, Adolph Hitler promoted the deceptive stab-in-the-back theory that blamed Germany's democratic leaders for betraying a supposedly undefeated German army by surrendering in 1918. Since German militarism quickly reasserted itself after World War One, Allied postwar treatment of Germany's World War Two POWs brought home the message that the German nation had been defeated on 8 May 1945. Canada added its own dimension by implementing a psychological warfare program based on a similar American initiative. Colonel Henry Faulk, head of the British reeducation program, held that Canada undertook a limited re-educational effort that was far too intellectual to affect the rank and file of the POWs. (3) His harsh estimate of Canadian curriculum grew out of the POWs' strong expressions of Nazi loyalism when the Canadian-held POWs arrived in Britain in 1946-47 to begin an indefinite period of reparation labor. Faulk, who was quick to fault the Canadian reeducation program, did not consider that the Canadian-held POWs, just as those held by the U.S., resented their indefinite delay in Britain to such an extent that they briefly reasserted their adherence to Nazism in defiance. (4) This study explores the psychological factors affecting the POWs' postwar ideology by asking fundamental pedagogical questions about Canada's reeducation program: How did the military educators attempt to achieve the desired de-programming outcomes, and what factors impeded the prisoners' process? Was the entire program a useful exercise? Why did the Western Allies undertake a reeducation program that involved the indoctrination of POWs? The Mackenzie King government expended a significant military investment on the psychological warfare through an intense bombardment of accurate and uncensored Allied information. Canadian officials, looking at reeducation efforts in the United States, embraced John Dewey's pedagogy of learning by doing to liberate of the POWs' minds from Nazi control. Final interrogations of POWs in 1946 revealed that most prisoners abandoned aggressive Nazi tenets but refused to abandon Nazism in its entirety. Their bunker mentality and their lingering insecurities probably made them cautious students of an Allied world view. Psychological surveys in 1947 verified that POWs leaving Canada failed to embrace democratic principles. 8 May 1945 stood as a great divide in Allied reeducation efforts. Indeed, the historical context of the two periods plays a key role because only in the aftermath of the war did the Allied powers establish a victors' role over the vanquished POW enemy. Allied foreign policy goals also came into play, because the Allies sought to discredit Nazi ideology and German militarism. Canada, too, imposed strict military measures that involved withdrawing wartime POW privileges. Canadian influence on German POW matters grew out of Canadian acceptance of thousands of British-held prisoners of war. In May of 1940, just as Germany prepared to attack Britain, and Nazi U-boats menaced Canadian shipping in the Gulf of St. …

Designing the virtual campus

Designing a virtual campus raises pedagogical questions as well as questions about the difference between the design of physical places and virtual places. When creating a virtual learning environment, we do not just ask, how do we present lecture notes and assignments on the internet? We also ask, how do we develop a learning environment in which students can access learning materials and interact with instructors and students? The emphasis is as much on interaction between students and instructors in a virtual place as it is on the information delivered. We can draw an analogy between the design of virtual environments and architectural design. We conceive of the virtual environment as a place, like a classroom or an office. An understanding of the design language and design process for virtual places in general helps to identify the possibilities for the design of a virtual campus. In this paper, we present the possibilities for learning in a virtual community and the considerations of design process and language when designing virtual places.

The Discipline of Spanish

of the Latin American culture industry and the emergence of the professional writer in the 1950s and 1960s. Arecent addition to the growing genre of theory how-to books, Teaching Contemporary to Un dergraduates (1994) illustrates the difficulties faced by literature teachers who want to expand the use of theory beyond graduate student seminars. In his introduction, William Cain pleads the necessary mea culpa when he be gins, Theory has a daunting range of meanings and ap plications (3). Cain senses the incongruities that arise from a book that prescribes specific uses for contemporary theory. A book directed at the pedagogical question of how to use theory in the classroom must avoid presenting a purely synchronic view of theory or a view that theory constitutes a stable body knowledge, a more or less uniform product that can be plugged into a course syllabus. The assump tions implicit in many contemporary interpretive ap proaches push us in different directions. Rather than finding convenient articulations of theory and course plans, a project more consonant with post structuralist approaches compels us to turn our critical attention to the field as a whole. An important corollary moves us to consider pedagogical issues and theory as a process that necessarily includes a reassessment of (at least certain) aspects of our discipline with the same critical rigor that we apply to our objects of study. At the same time that we help students learn to participate in the in terpretative processes associated with contemporary theory, we must not neglect the imperative to re-examine our field. In the first chapters of Manifesto of a Tenured Radical (1997), Nelson makes the point that novel interpretations

Literacy and the Pendulum of Change: Lessons for the 21st Century

The history of literacy education closely parallels other histories of education. One needs only to recall how innovative trends of the past few decades found a ready market for their claims of classroom success, such as team teaching, open-concept classrooms, new or modem mathematics, and self-paced instruction. Each innovation was touted as a panacea for problems facing the schools of the day. Literacy education is no different in its seemingly endless sequence of innovations, all offered as answers to various philosophical and pedagogical questions. This sequence, when viewed over an extended period, reflects a distinct pattern of repeated, almost circular emphasis on varying philosophies, teaching techniques, and instructional materials. Terms such as language experience (e.g., Allen, 1964; Hall, 1981; Stauffer, 1980; Veatch, 1959), phonics (e.g., Adams, 1990; Erickson & Juliebo, 1998; Gray, 1960), basal readers (e.g., Artley,

Teaching science with homeless children: Pedagogy, representation, and identity

In this article, I explore the question of what it means to create a science for all from the vantage point of urban homeless children. I draw on the work of critical and feminist scholars in science and education, as well as my own teaching and research with urban homeless children, to question how inclusive the science education community is in its efforts to understand the margins of science for all. I frame this analysis through the pedagogical questions of representation in science (what science is made to be) and identity in science (who we think we must be to engage in that science). J Res Sci Teach 35: 379–394, 1998.

Teaching science with homeless children: Pedagogy, representation, and identity

In this article, I explore the question of what it means to create a science for all from the vantage point of urban homeless children. I draw on the work of critical and feminist scholars in science and education, as well as my own teaching and research with urban homeless children, to question how inclusive the science education community is in its efforts to understand the margins of science for all. I frame this analysis through the pedagogical questions of representation in science (what science is made to be) and identity in science (who we think we must be to engage in that science). J Res Sci Teach 35: 379–394, 1998.