第一辑（下）

Investigating gender differences in reading

Author(s): Sarah Logan; Rhona Johnston

Source: Educational Review, 2010, 62(2)

Abstract: Girls consistently outperform boys on tests of reading comprehension, although the reason for this is not clear. In this review, differences between boys and girls in areas relating to reading will be investigated as possible explanations for consistent gender differences in reading attainment. The review will examine gender differences within the following different aspects of reading: differences in behavioural and motivational factors, difference in cognitive abilities, differences in brain activation during reading and differences in reading strategies and learning styles. A particular focus of this review will be on a research study which found a gender difference in reading favouring boys. Such a study may provide us with some insight into the type of learning environment to which boys may be more suited.

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Fear in education

Author(s): Carolyn Jackson

Source: Educational Review, 2010, 62(1)

Abstract: Fear is powerful and pervasive in English schools and central to many education discourses. However, it has received very little focussed attention in the education literature, despite the increasing interest afforded to it in other disciplines. Understanding how fear works is extremely important as fear and wellbeing are inextricably linked. However, currently we are a long way from knowing how fear operates in education. In this paper I argue that it would be beneficial for educational researchers to focus more attention on the diverse and often contradictory ways that fears operate in education, and on how they are constructed and sustained. I illustrate the value of focussing on fear by considering two aspects of secondary education - academic and social “success” and “failure” - and exploring the ways that fears operate in these spheres.

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Can reflective practice be taught?   

Author(s): Gail Edwards; Gary Thomas

Source: Educational Studies, 2010, 36(4)

Abstract: Almost ubiquitous in discourses about the development of teachers, reflective practice describes the process that occurs when persons are apprenticed to any meaningful activity. But reflective practice is a descriptive term for that process: it does not imply that the process is itself open to dissection and instruction. We contend that mistaken accounts of teachers' thinking have led to misdirected interventions which continue to hinder teachers' development. We conclude by suggesting that the question to be addressed by teacher educators is not the technicist one: how do we teach reflective practice?, but rather the values-based one: into which practices do we wish to initiate our teachers and pupils?

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Rethinking Education and Emancipation: Being, Teaching, and Power

Author(s): Noah De Lissovoy

Source: Harvard Educational Review, 2010, summer.

Abstract: This essay describes two central principles for a renewed emancipatory pedagogy across educational contexts: the recognition of an essential equality between students and teachers and a liberatory agency that uncovers and builds on students’ effectivity as beings against domination. While critical educational theory traditionally conceives of the human as a condition to be developed through the process of conscientization, De Lissovoy argues for the recognition of the human as the already existing fact of a body in struggle. He proposes an understanding of the human as the ontological kernel of the selves of students and teachers, as it asserts itself before contests over knowledge and identification. Building from recent work in cultural studies and philosophy that confronts the question of being as a political problem, the author develops an original understanding of emancipation as the discovery and affirmation of the persistent integrity and survival of beings in struggle.

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Learning to communicate or communicating to learn? A conceptual discussion on communication, meaning, and knowledge 

Author(s): Ninni Wahlstr m

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2010, 42(4)

Abstract: As the conditions for students' prospects of acquiring knowledge in school often are thought of as something that must be improved in the political rhetoric, it is also urgent, as Michael F. D. Young has argued, to ask what kind of knowledge should be the basis of the curriculum and to recognize the question of knowledge as central to the curricular debate. This article examines the grounds for a relational and communicative understanding of education. Drawing on John Dewey's reconstruction of the concept of experience and Donald Davidson's meaning theory in terms of three varieties of knowledge, the emphasis is on an inter-subjective conceptualization of meaning and knowledge and its implications. Central themes in the analysis are communication as a condition for the acquisition of knowledge; a shared, but not identical, world as a point of reference; and an approach to specialized knowledge as judgement formation. As a conclusion it is argued that one condition for acquisition of knowledge, in terms of meaning, is to participate in and be influenced by conversations with a shared purpose, within and between different groups.

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Rethinking the representation problem in curriculum inquiry  

Author(s): Bill Green

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2010, 42(4)

Abstract: The consolidation of reconceptualism as a distinctive tradition in curriculum inquiry is commonly understood to go hand-in-hand with the decline and even eclipse of an explicit political orientation in such work. This paper offers an alternative argument, focusing on a re-assessment of what has been called the representation problem, and exploring this assessment with reference to the 'modernism-postmodernism' debate. Knowledge, representation, and praxis are discussed. A case is made for understanding representation in terms of both semiotics and politics, drawing on postmodern political theory and philosophy. This case requires revisiting of the so-called reproduction thesis, as in effect 'unfinished business', and seeking to rethink the relationship between reproduction and representation as organizing categories in and for curriculum and social analysis. The paper thus brings together curriculum history and curriculum theory, as well as an Australian perspective to an important and enduring focus for discussion and debate in the contemporary curriculum field.

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Conceptual understandings as transition points: making sense of a complex social world  

Author(s): Andrea Milligan; Bronwyn Wood

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2010, 42(4)

Abstract: Teaching for conceptual understanding has been heralded as an effective approach within many curriculum frameworks internationally in an age of rapid and constant change around what counts as 'knowledge'. Drawing from research and experience within the social studies curriculum, this paper reflects on some of the largely unstated and unexplored aspects of adopting concept-based approaches to curriculum. The paper explores the historical and contemporary status and development of conceptual understandings that has led to teaching (at least within New Zealand social studies) that still remains largely focused on facts and topics. The nature of learning within the social sciences highlights a society which is not static and factual, but instead, complex and diverse. This paper presents a number of reasons why teaching conceptual understandings as inert facts or 'end points' fails to prepare learners to understand and engage in a complex and rapidly changing social world. Instead, conceptual understandings must be understood as changeable, contextual, and contested. The paper considers how conceptual fluidity might be accommodated in teacher planning, arguing that conceptual understandings may more usefully be regarded as transition points in learning, rather than irrefutable destinations.

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Negotiations left behind: in-between spaces of teacher-student negotiation and their significance for education   

Author(s): Anneli Frelin; Jan Grann s

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2010, 42(3)

Abstract: This paper argues against a view of curriculum as a means for moulding students into, and making teachers accountable for, something pre-determined and singularly governed by qualification demands of the labour market. It makes a case for the value of inter-subjective teacher-student relationships in education and addresses the significance of negotiations and their open-endedness. This paper draws its empirical material from case studies for which interviews were the main source for gathering data. The data analyses were made using the AtlasTi software designed for qualitative analysis. In the empirical material were found instances of negotiations in which inter-subjective relationships are established and maintained; negotiations that are rendered obscured or even invisible from a qualification purpose but that influence the educational processes. The results show that teachers and students creatively use potentials within contextual conditions to attain relationships which sometimes constitute a precondition for education.

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Getting it 'better': the importance of improving background questionnaires in international large-scale assessment  

Author(s): Leslie Rutkowski; David Rutkowski

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2010, 42(3)

Abstract: In addition to collecting achievement data, international large-scale assessment programmes gather auxiliary information from students and schools regarding the context of teaching and learning. In an effort to clarify some of the opacity surrounding international large-scale assessment programmes and the potential problems associated with less than optimal background questionnaires, this paper outlines how auxiliary student background data influence the black box of achievement score construction. This discussion is supplemented with a number of empirical examples that point to possible threats to accurate achievement estimation, including missing data treatment, poor scale reliability, and questionnaire respondents' misunderstanding or inaccurate answers to the questions.

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Curriculum and national identity: exploring the links between religion and nation in Pakistan    

Author(s): Naureen Durrani; M ir ad Dunne

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2010, 42(2)

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between schooling and conflict in Pakistan using an identity-construction lens. Drawing on data from curriculum documents, student responses to classroom activities, and single-sex student focus groups, it explores how students in four state primary schools in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Pakistan, use curricula and school experiences to make sense of themselves as Pakistani. The findings suggest that the complex nexus of education, religion, and national identity tends to construct 'essentialist' collective identities—a single identity as a naturalized defining feature of the collective self. To promote national unity across the diverse ethnic groups comprising Pakistan, the national curriculum uses religion (Islam) as the key boundary between the Muslim Pakistani 'self' and the antagonist non-Muslim 'other'. Ironically, this emphasis creates social polarization and the normalization of militaristic and violent identities, with serious implications for social cohesion, tolerance for internal and external diversity, and gender relations。

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The functions of Hong Kong's Chinese history, from colonialism to decolonization

Author(s): Flora L. F. Kan

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2010, 42(2)

Abstract: This paper examines the nature and socio-political functions of Hong Kong's 'Chinese history curriculum' during colonialism and since decolonization and argues that these functions have resulted in a curriculum characterized by rote-learning and geared towards social control. Students are initiated into the traditional, orthodox view of Chinese history and prescribed moral judgements. Consequently, there is little chance for independent thinking on the part of students.