Evidence-Based Dialogue Maps as a research tool to evaluate the quality of school pupils’ scientific argumentation

This pilot study focuses on the potential of Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping as a participatory action research tool to investigate young teenagers’ scientific argumentation. Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping is a technique for representing graphically an argumentative dialogue through Questions, Ideas, Pros, Cons and Data. Our research objective is to better understand the usage of Compendium, a Dialogue Mapping software tool, as both (1) a learning strategy to scaffold school pupils’ argumentation and (2) as a method to investigate the quality of their argumentative essays. The participants were a science teacher-researcher, a knowledge mapping researcher and 20 pupils, 12-13 years old, in a summer science course for “gifted and talented” children in the UK. This study draws on multiple data sources: discussion forum, science teacher-researcher’s and pupils’ Dialogue Maps, pupil essays, and reflective comments about the uses of mapping for writing. Through qualitative analysis of two case studies, we examine the role of Evidence-based Dialogue Maps as a mediating tool in scientific reasoning: as conceptual bridges for linking and making knowledge intelligible; as support for the linearisation task of generating a coherent document outline; as a reflective aid to rethinking reasoning in response to teacher feedback; and as a visual language for making arguments tangible via cartographic conventions

Scaffolding School Pupils’ Scientific Argumentation with Evidence-Based Dialogue Maps

This chapter reports pilot work investigating the potential of Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping to scaffold young teenagers’ scientific argumentation. Our research objective is to better understand pupils’ usage of dialogue maps created in Compendium to write scientific ex-planations. The participants were 20 pupils, 12-13 years old, in a summer science course for “gifted and talented” children in the UK. Through qualitative analysis of three case studies, we investigate the value of dialogue mapping as a mediating tool in the scientific reasoning process during a set of learning activities. These activities were published in an online learning envi-ronment to foster collaborative learning. Pupils mapped their discussions in pairs, shared maps via the online forum and in plenary discussions, and wrote essays based on their dialogue maps. This study draws on these multiple data sources: pupils’ maps in Compendium, writings in science and reflective comments about the uses of mapping for writing. Our analysis highlights the diversity of ways, both successful and unsuccessful, in which dialogue mapping was used by these young teenagers

An Interactive Game Approach to Learning in Historical Geology and Paleontology

This article describes an interactive game that can be used in conjunction with traditional laboratory work, group discussions, student presentations, and writing exercises. It provides an enjoyable and motivating dimension to a university seminar/lab course in Historical Geology and Paleontology. A simple spelling-bee-type game evolves over ten weeks into a room-sized board game based on the geologic time scale. The game helps students learn fossil morphology, identification, classification, and paleoecology while illustrating the occurrences of important fossil groups, sea level fluctuations, and orogenic events through time. It also serves as an effective means for evaluating student progress in the laboratory. Although the game content is designed for geology majors in a university setting, the time scale game board can easily be adapted to a secondary school environment. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Materiality, Beauty, and Space: The Eastern Traditions as a Ressourcement for Pentecostal Worship and the Arts

Excerpt: Pentecostals have reason to feel some affinity with the more Eastern traditions.... Since liturgical worship is a central and highly developed aspect of Orthodox Church life and practice, this paper will focus specifically on the elements of materiality, beauty, and space in the tradition and worship life of the Eastern churches. To begin with, using the writings of Maximus the Confessor (d.662), a compendium of the early Eastern tradition and a foundational bridge into the full development of Byzantine theology, I will briefly sketch out some cosmological and soteriological accents which provide a context for the church’s views on materiality, beauty, and space. I will then move on to trace the refinement of these perspectives and enfranchisement into the dogmatic tradition. After a sampling of resulting Orthodox vision and practice with respect to our three foci, I will suggest some possible ways the witness of the Eastern churches might serve as a confirming and enriching resource for the further development of Pentecostal worship and the arts in the Spirit

Quaker-Buddhist Blendings

From their beginning, Friends have benefited from the religious ideas and spiritual practices of other communities.1 Such influences and confluences have always been a sign of spiritual openness and vitality among religious communities across history. Where, for example, would Augustine of Hippo, the most influential theologian in the history of Western Christianity, be without the insights of the pagan Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus? This essay considers two persons who identify as both Buddhist and Quaker yet define that relationship in complementary ways. Like other Christians, such as Ruben Habito and Paul Knitter,2 some Friends have explored the gifts of other-than-Christian communities. For some, this has led to a respectful borrowing of practices. For others, it has resulted in dual membership in Quakerism and another religion. Each of these poses challenges. Borrowers must consider the ethics of their actions, perhaps especially borrowers whose cultural histories include oppression and colonization of others. Dual belongers have to face the competing demands of two religious systems with their different concepts of self, reality, divinity, worship, meditation, and ethics

Displaying Lives: the Narrative of Objects in Biographical Exhibitions

Biographical exhibitions are a museum practice that asks for critical consideration. Grounding the argument in critical theory, social studies and museum theory, the article explores the narrative function of objects in biographical exhibitions by addressing the social significance of objects in relation to biography and their relevance when presented into an exhibition display. Central is the concept of objects as ‘biographical relics’ that are culturally fetishized in biographical narratives. This raises questions about biographical reliability and the cultural role that such objects plays in exhibition narratives as bearers of reality and as metonymical icons of the biographical subject. The article considers examples of biographical exhibitions of diverse figures such as Gregor Mendel, Madame de Pompadour and Roland Barthes, and the role that personal items, but also portraits and photographs, play in them

Historical spaces as narrative: mapping collective memory onto cinematic space

The following article proposes and develops a single theory: that unlike written history which tends to privilege chronology, teleology and consequentiality, historical films have increasingly abandoned overt means of narration and instead inscribe historical meanings onto cinematic spaces in historical films. The reason for this shift, I argue, is that recent advances in historiography have begun to encourage scepticism towards the human element in reconstructing narratives. In a world bombarded with media rhetoric from all directions, persuasion from traditionally “authoritative” sources such as voiceovers, prologues, marketing material proclaiming the use of historical experts and research, individual viewpoints, eyewitness accounts, etc, all become open to criticism. In the absence of authorial authenticity, and the gradual erosion of trust in both grand narratives and individual insights, the historical film nevertheless still requires some means by which the viewer can be persuaded of its veracity through shared or collective memory, history proper and lived social experience. It is to answer this need, then, that history and historical narratives have begun to place an emphasis on historical spaces as a means to retell history by creating a “cognitive map”, which offers recourse to an intertextual “representational legacy”

Book Review: The Asian Synod: Texts and Commentaries

A review of The Asian Synod: Texts and Commentaries edited by Peter C. Phan

Smart Cities and M³: Rapid Research, Meaningful Metrics and Co-Design

The research described in this paper is undertaken under the banner of the smart city, a concept that captures the way urban spaces are re-made by the incursion of new technology. Much of smart is centred on converting everyday activities into data, and using this data to generate knowledge mediated by technology. Ordinary citizens, those that may have their lives impacted by the technology, usually are not properly involved in the ‘smartification’ process. Their perceptions, concerns and expectations should inform the conception and development of smart technologies at the same extent. How to engage general public with smart cities research is the central challenge for the Making Metrics Meaningful (MMM) project. Applying a rapid participatory method, ‘Imagine’ over a five-month period (March – July) the research sought to gain insights from the general public into novel forms of information system innovation. This brief paper describes the nature of the accelerated research undertaken and explores some of the themes which emerged in the analysis. Generic themes, beyond the remit of an explicit transport focus, are developed and pointers towards further research directions are discussed. Participatory methods, including engaging with self- selected transport users actively through both picture creation and programmatically specific musical ‘signatures’ as well as group discussion, were found to be effective in eliciting users’ own concerns, needs and ideas for novel information systems