Citizenship education, truth and learning : some thoughts on professional deliberation

Through consideration of a classroom context observed as part of a PGCE student teacher’s professional development, reading as a learning activity is considered. It is proposed that ‘learning to read’ engages pupils in a critical social-cultural-political project. Through further analysis of a pupil response identified as ‘wrong’, learning in citizenship education is considered through the prism of realist and constructivist perspectives. Finally, current educational ‘good practice’ is identified as offering more than just ‘things to do in the classroom’; aspects are shown to be concordant with elements of constructivist thinking, thinking which potentially offers professionals a prism through which to examine practise. In short, this paper does not propose that teachers ‘become’ constructivist in orientation; rather it offers, as an example, how adopting various theoretical positions from which to deconstruct education can and does provide for alternative perspectives both on educational policy and personal-professional viewpoints

Embracing Diverse Thinkers: A Case Study Examining the Graduation Rates from a High Autism College Student Population

The purpose of this intrinsic case study was to describe how Alpha College, a private college in the southeastern United States with high neurodiverse enrollment, generates uniquely high graduation rates for its autistic student population. The case study answers the following central question: CQ) How does Alpha College, a private college in the southeastern United States with high neurodiverse enrollment, generate high graduation rates for its autistic student population? The intrinsic case design focused on the case itself; Alpha College observes uniquely high graduation rates of autistic students. This study was guided by Blume and Singers\u27 social stigma theory and Goffman’s neurodiversity theory. Data were collected through interviews, document analysis, and a focus group. Pseudonyms were used for interviews and focus group participants. Triangulation was achieved with audio recordings, transcripts, field notes, and analytical memoing. Data were synthesized using Yin’s components of single-case research, Stake’s interview transcription technique, and Saldaña’s Eclectic Codes. Results showed two key themes holistic education and faculty support. The implications of this case study pertain to policy and practice. Implications of the study impact policy pertaining to federal guidelines to better meet the needs of the autistic student population in higher education and the infrastructure of conventional university support programs, resources, and pedagogy. Implications call for a transformative shift in perception and action. Perception affects change in action, resulting in more effective supports, and services, leading to higher graduation rates for autistic students nationwide

Circling the Cross: Bridging Native America, Education, and Digital Media

Part of the Volume on Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital MediaTo paraphrase a Native elder, any road will get you somewhere. The question for Native America is, where will the information highway take them? As Native Americans continue to face challenges from the legacy of colonialism, new media provide both an opportunity and crises in education. Standardized education policy such as No Child Left Behind and funding cuts in social services inadvertently impact Net access and Indian education, yet alternative programs and approaches exist. It is necessary that programs conceptualize new media learning strategies within a historical context by being sensitive to the political and cultural connotations of literacy and technology in Native American communities. By encouraging the use of new media as a tool for grassroots community media and locally relevant storytelling, this chapter asks educators to consider an alternative epistemology that incorporates non-Western approaches to ecology and knowledge

The Necessity of Agency:Social Practice in Late Capitalist Modes of Cultural Production

As art has become more and more coopted in globalized capital, and the role of art as labor has become more and more obscured by questions of class and increased technological reproduction, socially engaged art (SEA) is a gesture toward the reclaiming of art as communal (and therefore inherently class-conscious) event. By a careful analysis of the role of the market in the identification of something as art, and the role of celebrity as a function of such a christening, I take a critical stance as a basic methodology for what is ultimately a class-based analysis of art, as suggested, for instance, by the work of Ben Davis. It is only by the careful working out of such class assumptions regarding not only art, but the act of writing about art, and certainly the act of writing about art in a dissertation within an institution that bears authority regarding the establishment of art practices, that the ground can be cleared for a constructive argument. This is an argument that has only gained in force in the art world itself as more and more artists have sought to create artistic experiences outside of the normative function of the gallery or the power structures of the university. By examining the class structure of art practice, the dissertation will assess the role of art as labor, and the role of art in production of community cultural development. Through various socially engaged projects, I analyze art not as an objectoriented means of production within a system of commodities, but as the encapsulating “house” of community. As such, art practice is that which opens onto self-realization of the collective within the horizon of the new. This, it should be noted, is also most often today seen as the role of science. The position of the expert haunts both art and science, but whereas it is a burden for art to carry such a vestige of neoliberal enlightenment, science readily accepts the figure of the expert in science as the one who enlightens. In this way, both art and science make truth claims, but science—in its aspects as cultural guardian of positivism—leads into a labyrinth of technology; art, on the other hand, leads into the open. Education, therefore, is not something that teaches art, but is in itself an art practice, a socially engaged practice that is fully in keeping with a class-based notion of art. Through the communal production of knowledge, art again has a particular truthvalue that is established through communication. Art is both an inherently political discourse, but also that discourse which is established through the creative and intimate space of silence (again, a space that is foreclosed through the vantages of power). Through education, through the juxtaposition of “class” and “Class,” art establishes a radical aesthetics, in the old sense of radical—getting to the root. This radical act, then, is the radical act of site-specificity of the immediate temporality that constitutes the practice. As a landscaper prior to beginning my art practice, I understand art as “earthwork,” the tending and nurturing inherent in gardening, but also the clearing necessary for such an event to take place. As I have suggested, this is exactly what is required for art as radical rootedness to come to the fore. Art is a temporal modality of being: it is inherently futural in its activation, though rooted in the past. That is what has drawn me to print as propaganda, knowing its rich history, but also its possibility as what Carse calls an “infinite game.” Art is a necessary communal practice that has been coopted to support the logic of late capitalism. This has uprooted it into the flow of commodities through the art market. Experimental practices such as socially engaged art are necessary to destabilize and undermine this power structure to retain the grassroots, radically democratic nature of art

BERA-TACTYC Early Childhood Research Review 2003-2017

BERA/TACTYC Review of Early Childhood Education and Care in the UK, 2003-2017 has involved a wide range of early childhood specialists, both in the early consultation stages, and in writing the five main sections of the Review. Teams of authors and their reference groups came together from TACTYC – the Association for Professional Development in Early Years, and the BERA Early Childhood Education and Care SIG. Using specific questions to interrogate the literature, each team worked on one of five main themes: Professionalism; Parenting and Family; Play and Pedagogy; Learning, Development and Curriculum, and Assessment and School Readiness. These themes are contextualised within broad policy issues in the UK. The Introduction shows the working methods for the Review, and the Conclusion brings together key messages and suggestions for future research. We hope that the Review will prove useful to a range of early childhood specialists, including students, researchers, practitioners, policy makers and teachers in further and higher education. We intend to create a User Review that will be aimed at practitioners and to engage other stakeholders in current trends and debates. The Review is being launched at a time of change and uncertainty within early childhood education and care, and we hope that the Review will provide a focal point for discussions about future directions in the four UK policy frameworks, the importance of research, and how we use research evidence to inform provision and practice

Toward an Ecology of Gaming

In her introduction to the Ecology of Games, Salen argues for the need for an increasingly complex and informed awareness of the meaning, significance, and practicalities of games in young people's lives. The language of the media is replete with references to the devil (and heavy metal) when it comes to the ill-found virtues of videogames, while a growing movement in K-12 education casts them as a Holy Grail in the uphill battle to keep kids learning. Her essay explores the different ways the volume's contributors add shades of grey to this often black-and-white mix, pointing toward a more sophisticated understanding of the myriad ways in which gaming could and should matter to those considering the future of learning

Unexpected learning: Art, play, and social space

This study is about play. It is about some of the forms of play you may have engaged in as a kid and are now integrated in the art practices of three artists, Núria Güell, Jordi Canudas and Nicolás Dumit-Estévez. Their practices defy the traditional conceptions of both art and play as ends in themselves. This study is contextualized as phenomenological research that aims at understanding what role play can assume in socially engaged art practices, and in what ways it provides a dynamic filter or trajectory for carrying each work forward. It is centered on the experiences of three artists who have developed practices that are participatory, presented in public spaces, open to diverse audiences, and whose design seeks at questioning, transforming or experimenting with new forms of sociability. The study presents the artists’ narratives through interviews and intertwined with the researcher’s experience with the data and documentation, acting as a site for shared meaning making. The findings of the study suggest that essential to play is movement, and that play’s integration in socially engaged art practices opens up transitional or permeable spaces in which previously discrete identities become border crossings opening to the potential emergence of new ideas about self and societ

Democracy through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in an Early Childhood Setting: A Case Study

ICT is regarded as playing an ever increasing role in the lives of people and this includes young children. This case study, to be called the research project hereafter, focuses on how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) might facilitate democratic child directed learning. This is defined by examining the ways children, and other people involved in their lives as learners, might use ICT as a tool for directing learning and what other features can support this. The research project is a case study involving one early childhood centre and draws upon data over a one year period. The data was collected using interviews with teachers at the centre, questionnaires from family whānau of children currently attending the centre and documentation of learning episodes of children that involved ICT. A qualitative methodology was used to capture experiences, attitudes and opinions of the participants and these were analysed by thematic analysis. The research project identifies the types of uses and purposes that children, their family whānau and their teachers have for ICT. It also identifies and examines the attitudes toward, and impacts of, ICT on the children, family Whānau and teachers taking part in this research project. This is explored by drawing on socio–cultural learning and defined features of democratic education practices. The project also examines ICT contributions to learning and teaching within the pedagogical and professional commitments of Te Whāriki, the Early childhood curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand ( Ministry of Education, (MoE) 1996). The findings of the research project clearly identify with the literature and educational policy that recognises ICT as prominent and relevant to peoples lives and that includes young children and their learning. The findings also indicate that ICT in early childhood education is positively received by participants in the research project. There are also clear examples in the findings that affirm democratic features of education and reflect aspects of child initiated and directed learning. What supports child initiated and directed learning , and importantly its consistency, is identified in the findings and conclusions that consider the need to develop stronger, more informed and more collaborative pedagogical conversations between teachers and family/whānau. Such pedagogical understandings would have to come from teachers engaging in more ICT policy aligned planning and reflective practice on the place of ICT and their understanding of democratic teaching and learning