Taking video cameras into the classroom.

Research into the communication and interactions in classrooms need to take the multimodal nature of classrooms into account. Video cameras can capture the dynamics of teaching and learning, but the use of videos for research purposes needs to be well thought through in order to accommodate the challenges this tool holds. This article refers to three research projects where videos were used to generate data. It is argued that videos allow the researcher to hone in on the micro-details and, in contrast to other data generation tools, allows researchers who were not present at the time to view what has been witnessed. A video recording is a data source but not data by itself and the information that is discerned from a video is framed and shaped by the research paradigm and the questions asked

Technology Policy, Gender, and Cyberspace

Event based sampling occurs when the time instants are measured everytime the amplitude passes certain pre-defined levels. This is in contrast with classical signal processing where the amplitude is measured at regular time intervals. The signal processing problem is to separate the signal component from noise in both amplitude and time domains. Event based sampling occurs in a variety of applications. The purpose here is to explain the new types of signal processing problems that occur, and identify the need for processing in both the time and event domains. We focus on rotating axles, where amplitude disturbances are caused by vibrations and time disturbances from measurement equipment. As one application, we examine tire pressure monitoring in cars where suppression of time disturbance is of utmost importance

Whispers in the Classroom

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the UnexpectedOnline backchannel chat rooms offer the potential to transform classroom learning in unexpected and powerful ways. However, the specific ways in which they can influence teaching pedagogy and learning opportunities are less well understood. Activities in a backchannel may include the dissemination of ideas, knowledge building, asking and answering questions, engaging in critical discourse, and sharing information and resources. This chapter describes a backchannel chat room that has taken place over multiple years in a large university student community. It explores unforeseen and exciting opportunities, as well as possible limitations, for designing teaching and learning practices to leverage this communication medium. With a deeper understanding of the opportunities and limitations of the backchannel, educators and instructional designers could transform the classroom experience from a passive lecture model to one of active, collaborative, and engaged knowledge production

Learning and Instruction: Social-Cognitive Perspectives

In this article, we try to expand the lenses classically used in social psychology of development, and in particular, in the post-Piagetian tradition, to recent contributions of social and cognitive dynamics in development and learning. Psychological development has to be redefined as involving socially framed, culturally mediated, and interpersonally negotiated processes, and the dynamic relation between the person, others, objects, and instruments that are reconfigured through teaching–learning activities. The units of analysis, besides the traditional focus on the individual and/or isolated cognitive event, also include nowadays peer interaction and partners' roles, dialogical processes, argumentation, and specific institutional features of human practices, as illustrated through experimental social psychology. According to this general framework, learning and thinking appear more clearly as the collaborative result of autonomous minds confronting viewpoints and cultural artifacts (tools, semiotic mediations, tasks, division of roles) and trying to manage differences, feedbacks, and conflicts to pursue their activities. Moving from one activity to another, and from one space to another (pretest, joint activity, posttest), children have to reorganize their understanding, their language, and the organization of their social interactions

Reframing the L2 learning experience as narrative reconstructions of classroom learning

In this study we investigate the situated and dynamic nature of the L2 learning experience through a newly-purposed instrument called the Language Learning Story Interview, adapted from McAdams’ life story interview (2007). Using critical case sampling, data were collected from an equal number of learners of various L2s (e.g., Arabic, English, Mandarin, Spanish) and analyzed using qualitative comparative analysis (Rihoux & Ragin, 2009). Through our data analysis, we demonstrate how language learners construct overarching narratives of the L2 learning experience and what the characteristic features and components that make up these narratives are. Our results provide evidence for prototypical nuclear scenes (McAdams et al., 2004) as well as core specifications and parameters of learners’ narrative accounts of the L2 learning experience. We discuss how these shape motivation and language learning behavior

Multiliteracies, Pedagogy and Identities:Teacher and Student Voices from a Toronto Elementary School

In this article, I draw on an ethnographic case study of one Toronto elementary school, as part of a Canada‐wide action research project: Multiliteracy Project (www.multiliteracies.ca). I have explored how Perminder, a grade‐4 teacher, devel‐ oped a multiliteracies pedagogy, drawing on her own and her students’ identities and linguistic and cultural forms of capital to create learning opportunities for all students to access the English mainstream curriculum. Alternative pedagogical choices in‐ cluded students’ creation of multimodal dual language “identity texts” (Cummins, Bismilla, Cohen, Giampapa, & Leoni, 2005a), and identity work, expanding literacy practices valued within Canadian classrooms. Key words: critical pedagogies, critical literacies, ESL/EAL, identities, Multilit‐ eracy Project, urban schools Dans cet article, l’auteure part d’une étude de cas ethnographique portant sur une école primaire de Toronto, étude réalisée dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche‐ action pancanadien, The Multiliteracy Project (www.multiliteracies.ca). Elle analyse comment Perminder, une enseignante de 4e année, a mis au point une pédagogie en matière de multilitératies. Puisant dans sa propre identité et dans celles de ses élèves ainsi que dans diverses formes de capital linguistiques et culturelles, elle offre à tous ses élèves la possibilité d’apprendre et ainsi d’avoir accès au curriculum standard en anglais. Parmi les choix pédagogiques novateurs figuraient la création par les élèves de « textes identitaires » (Cummins et coll. 2005a) multimodaux en deux langues et des travaux portant sur l’identité, élargissant ainsi les pratiques en matière de littéra‐ tie jugées utiles dans les classes canadiennes. Mots clés : pédagogies critiques, littératies critiques, ESL/EAL, identités, The Multiliteracy Project, écoles urbaines.

Emotion, Place, and Practice: Exploring the Interplay in Children\u27s Engagement in Ecologists\u27 Sampling Practices

In science education, there has been a sustained focus on supporting the emergence of science practices in K–12 and field-based settings. Recent work has elevated the integral role of emotion in sparking and sustaining such disciplinary practices, deepening the field\u27s understanding of what is entailed in “doing” science. Yet even as we gain this richer understanding of practice, less attention has been given to the places where practice emerges. These places play a critical role in the co-emergence of emotion and practice, and while separate strands of research have elevated emotion and practice or, alternately, place and practice, rarely has their dynamic relationship been considered together. In this article, I explore this interplay of emotion, place, and practice emergent in children\u27s sampling practices within a multiweek curriculum centered around their schoolyard soil ecosystem. Through a comparative case study analysis of two student pairs using video data, student interviews, and classroom artifacts, my analysis reveals how children\u27s emergent emotion was entangled in their relationships with the schoolyard and life within, shaping not only how they engaged in sampling practices but also what dimensions of the ecological system they attended to. I argue that emotion and place should be central to the design, teaching, and analysis of learning contexts, in turn centering the social and emplaced dimensions of science disciplinary practices for children and scientists alike. Implications for science teaching and learning are discussed, with particular consideration of field-based sciences