Sophisticated Thinking Research Articles

Beyond Concerns with Self: The sophisticated thinking of beginning student teachers

The last 10 years have seen a significant transformation of initial teacher education in England. The establishment of school-based partnerships and increasingly tight government regulation have reduced the autonomy of universities in the professional preparation of teachers. In the context of these changes the Developing Expertise of Beginning Teachers project was established to explore the learning of beginning teachers through the course of their initial training and early years in the profession. This paper, based on post-lesson interview data collected during the first half of the training year, focuses on two aspects of student teachers' thinking: the reasons put forward for their teaching decisions; and their evaluation of that teaching. Analysis of lesson aims and the factors taken into account in seeking to achieve them suggests a high level of concern for pupil learning, echoed in their lesson evaluations, and a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of the complexity of teaching.

The Birth Order Trap

Born to Rebel (Sulloway, 1996) embeds a theory of birth order within an evolutionary perspective that gives a refreshing new twist to theorizing about family structure. Most past birth order “theorizing” is of the type that both begins and ends with “Isn't it interesting that….” In Rodgers and Thompson (1985/86), we documented birth order research on presidents and strippers, artists and assassins, hockey players and cigarette smokers; even the birth order of birth order researchers has been investigated. Sulloway (1996), in contrast, provided explicit mechanisms to explain why he believes that birth order plays an important role in revolutionary behavior. The mechanisms derive from sophisticated thinking about both evolution and family dynamics.

KNOWING GOD: CHILDREN, PLAY, AND PARADOX

Abstract The process of sophisticated theological thinking in children begins at an early age. Thinking deeply about the ultimate concerns of life is inherent in human beings. This paper, based on the author's conversations with his children, explores the profound processes of theological reflection in playground songs sung by children in public elementary schools, informal conversations with children about prayer and religious insight, and the place of paradox and play in the theological reflection of children. Drawing on the works of such scholars as Winnicott, Gerkin, Rizzutto, and Stivers, the author charts intriguing areas for reflection as well as needed areas for future research.

Church fathers, independent virgins (review)

156 Reviews Robin's work is a splendid addition to those on the Italian humanists, and far the most scholarly study of Filelfo so far. She is thefirstto understand his complex character and to appreciate the artistry of his writings and their debt to bis Italian and classical predecessors. The book itself is well printed, strongly bound and a credit to the publisher. John R. C. Martyn Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies University of Melbourne Salisbury, Joyce E., Church fathers, independent virgins, London and New York, Verso, 1991; cloth; pp. viii, 168; R.R.P. US$69.95. Renunciation of theflesh,long considered one of the least accessible of medieval virtues, has become fashionable again, if only as an object of scholarly enquiry. Peter Brown has done much to change our attitudes in The body and society: men, women, and sexual renunciation in early Christianity (New York, 1988). Joyce Salisbury pays close attention to a theme not so emphasised by Brown: that the ascetic teaching of the Church Fathers was profoundly masculine in character. By contrast, the values expounded in the Lives of ascetic women, independent virgins, differ radically, she argues, from the patristic norm, which emphasised subjection to authority, the fear of sexual temptation, and the virtue of stability. There is much to applaud in this study, which indirectly can help open up for fresh reading a vast medieval literature about ascetic women saints. Her analysis of patristic teaching on sexuality (uniquely the Latin tradition) is clear and concise. Unlike many feminist commentators on the Church Fathers, Salisbury is careful to emphasise the gulf between the views of Jerome and earlier Fathers on sexuality and the much more sophisticated thinking of Augustine about the difference between good and bad sex. In her chapter on 'Augustine's sexual revolution', she presents the significance of Augustine's teaching, at odds with that of Jerome, that there was sex in Paradise, albeit without lust. While Salisbury is not thefirstto point out this difference, her clearly written commentary deserves to be commended. She does not exaggerate Augustine's innovation. 'Augustine was willing to alter the Christian understanding of sexuality, but not the late Roman hierarchy of power' (p. 49). The true originality of her book emerges in her discussion of sometittleknown saints, whose lives are recorded in a tenth-century manuscript of the Escorial. She convincingly presents the Lives of Constantina, in legend the virtuous daughter of Constantine, and of Mary the reformed prostitute of Egypt as subtly reworking traditional ascetic themes of Jerome. Egeria and Melania the Younger are free-footed aristocratic women who spend their money on spiritual sightseeing in a way Jerome did not approve. Pelagia and Castissima spurn conventional social mores by taking on men's clothing. Whatever the historical Reviews 157 basis behind these narratives, the model of behaviour being presented is clearly distinct from conventional masculine ascetic models. One difficulty of dealing with saints' Lives of this kind is that we lack alternative source material by which w e might supplement the hagiographical record. It is difficult to know how far traditional masculine models have already 'interfered' in the transmission of a legend. It might be helpful to team about the nature of the monastic communities in which the memory of these independent women was preserved. Nonetheless, Salisbury does a great service by forcing us to look at familiar stories in a new light Constant J. M e w s Department of History Monash University Staniland, Kay, Medieval craftsmen: embroiders, London, British Museum Press, 1991; paper; pp. 92; 77 plates; R.R.P. AUS$22.95 [distributed in Australia by Thames and Hudson]. This short, but lavishly and effectively illustrated, volume is one of a series which the British Museum is producing on medieval craftsmen. The name is perhaps inappropriate for embroiderers, who were predominantly, though by no means exclusively, women. The object of the work is to provide a non-technical overview of the organisation of the craft, its designers and operators, its methods and techniques, its patrons and their relationship with their clients. This it achieves with considerable success. As the author acknowledges, constant use and a brisk market in second hand clothes...

The analysis of time-related events after cardiac surgery

T he goal of scientific progress in cardiac surgery, as in all areas of medicine is to derive inferences that can be applied to improve the management of future patients. These inferences may be derived from experimental animal models, prospective patient trials and retrospective patient studies. However, the era where inferences could be made by relatively unsophisticated scientific methods has passed and difficult problems that remain require sophisticated and innovative thinking. Furthermore, the likelihood of surgeons untrained in some aspect of scientific methodology generating new information is becoming increasingly remote.

Guided Thinking: A Strategy for Encouraging Excellence at the Middle Level

Middle level teachers can avoid passive seatwork and encourage students to think using a "guided thinking" approach. The au thor describes the strategy, designed to help adolescents develop more sophisticated thinking and reasoning skills.

The role of the self in biological and cultural systems: A response to Czikszentmihalyi and Massimini

Once, while still a college freshman, I (the first author) saw a man clearing a path in the snow from his doorway to the street. Suddenly I began to think of the scene in different terms. I thought of the snow as crystallized forms of oxygen and hydrogen, precipitated in a given range of temperatures, responding to Newtonian laws of gravitation, settling on earth and creating impediments to human locomotion. I saw the man’s house as an insulating barrier creating a temperature differential between a micro-environment in which he dwelled and the larger ambient atmosphere, accompanied by a few thoughts on laws of thermodynamics and the principles of heat transmission through varying materials. And my attitude toward these reflections was one of ambivalence. Had I thought something useful or was this pretentious musing? I never could decide, and that is to some extent what we feel about the far more sophisticated thinking of Csikszentmihalyi and Massimini (1985). We can’t quite decide whether what they are saying is extremely interesting, or merely the commonplace raised to a high order of technical expression. The authors point out that earlier approaches to the study of human evolution have been unidirectional, with some theorists arguing that biology determines culture and others arguing that culture determines biology. However, the authors assert that neither position, nor even an interactionist position, gikes an adequate account of the process. They propose a third, autonomous factor, the role of self, which enters into circular causality with culture and biology. At the descriptive level, much of what the authors say appears true, but perhaps self-evidently so. Who can deny that “plans in the briefcase” constitute “exosomatically stored information”? Who can deny that when a man makes a decision to marry, this psychological choice has consequences both for the biological and cultural systems ? But the critical question is whether the authors’ perspective sheds new light on these matters, leads to an actual increment in knowledge, or is essentially a reformulation of what we already know. Certainly the terms of their argument are not especially new. For example, in the nineteenth century, Auguste Comte (1854), in seeking the basis of an