Event, weak pedagogy, and shattered love in John Williams' Stoner

What do we mean when we talk about events? Can we even (really) say we know what an ‘event’ is? To begin thinking about teaching in terms of the event is to begin thinking about all of those things that happen in our classrooms that we don’t and can’t control. Thinking the event means thinking about the unthinkable, the unforeseeable and ultimately the unknowable. It is about letting go of a concept – almost impossible to relinquish – that teaching and learning are transparent entities: understandable, limitable, predictable, something we can and do know about. Thinking about the event is thinking about what actually happens, not what we think should or ought to happen in our classrooms

Classroom of the apes: is teaching monkey business?

Between 1973 and 2000, social scientists conducted one of the most significant, innovative and challenging programmes in the history of linguistic and educational research. ‘Project Nim’ investigated both the interaction between nature and nurture and attempted to bring human level gestural communication to a chimpanzee called ‘Nim’. The study offered some of the most important insights into our understanding of language and cognition and what it means to be human, and represents a landmark in our thinking about teaching and learning, and education itself. Here, the authors contend that essential lessons from the experiment have been overlooked and risk being forgotten. This article revisits the study, exploring some of the issues it raises, and attempts to site what we learnt from Nim in the context of modern teaching practice. Through this re‐examination we intend to provoke thinking not only about ‘Project Nim’, but perhaps also about other lost lessons in education. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of remembering the lessons we learnt when trying to teach Nim, and how they can enhance our practice as teachers for all learners

Conceptions of teaching and justice as pivotal to mathematics teacher educators’ thinking about mathematical knowledge for teaching

Recent scholarship has explored mathematical demands faced by mathematics teacher educators and ways to support their development, but little attention has been given to the basic question of how mathematics teacher educators think about content knowledge for teaching. Knowing what they think could inform efforts to support them. Our analysis reveals that some think about mathematical knowledge for teaching as an independent, abstracted resource to be taught and learned in relative isolation from teaching, while others think about it as dynamic, situated work. We argue that this key difference matters for how they work with teachers. Further, our analysis reveals that their thinking about both teaching and justice interacts with their thinking about mathematical knowledge for teaching and that their thinking in these other two domains can be a resource for supporting their mathematical development.acceptedVersio

Considering pedagogical content knowledge in the context of research on teaching: An example from technology.

When thinking about teaching, the pedagogical content knowledge of teachers cannot be ignored. We argue that pedagogical content knowledge is a major determiner of teaching practice and is central to teachers' curriculum decision-making at the classroom level. This paper takes a sociocultural perspective on the importance of developing teachers' pedagogical content knowledge. From our classroom-based research in technology education and the past research on pedagogical content knowledge we propose a model of pedagogical content knowledge with seven characteristics that we believe are important for effective teaching

The importance of drawing in the architecture project and its teaching

We start designing working and thinking with our hands. With them, we can shape an external object first and think and develop the architectural project through it. When designing, our hands act as tools that move between the worlds of matter and thought, making it possible to work with our ideas, clarifying them and fixing them up into something buildable. From the drawing, the performing of sketches, models, collages ... we can travel that road made by ideas to enter a world of physical reality through a process in which the actions of thinking, drawing and building continually succeed each other. This article tries to explore the role of our hands when designing in order to learn more about the process of creating the architectural project and the way it is generated, to finally speak about issues interesting for us concerning the way they are taught. Every project comes into existence through a handmade object. Hands move through the paper whiteness, the pencil start fixing strokes on its surface, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly, and sometimes, with different intensities. Shapes yet to be defined, barely sketched, features of forms still emerging... constitute, at the beginning of the project, a series of acts which commence it and will develop in time. During this process, drawing assumes a prominent role, not only as an instrument allowing the representation of the projectual idea itself, making it visible and defining its materialization and construction, but also as an element that generates thinking, as it is through drawing that we can work and think on the idea that originates it. Drawing, writing, building models..., in short, working with your hands consciously, leads us to develop a thinking process in which gaze and hands work together. It would be necessary to claim that action for the teaching of architectural projects as a method of doing and thinking. During the project development, it would be necessary for students to learn how to work with instruments, tools... that resist the achievement of mere projections or mechanical representations of those things before their eyes, to get into the being of things, their presence or their being present. In this respect, and in the field of the architectural project teaching, it is essential to highlight the importance of drawing due to its effectiveness to transmit and express a form of thinking. As Martin Heidegger suggests, our hands are organs for our thinking. When they are not working in order to know or learn, they are thinking. Drawing, building models, sketching... is a matter of “doing” that turns into a way of “thinking” where hands and ideas are joined together as long as the project is carried out. Therefore, the value of drawing lies in its function as a tool for reflection. Designing means to think in a graphic way, to materialise our ideas through our hands to work with them, think about them and, to materialize them once more. Sketches, models, collages, schemes... suitable for every step during the project development allow us to check the different design options, test and error trials. These act as critical instruments that inform about the validity of every decision taken. This is why the project cannot emerge from the mere application of a static, definitely established knowledge, but from a dialectical process between thought and action, gaze and hands. Therefore, we could say that the drawing is an instrument of reflection that allows us to focus our thoughts, to define a support to contain, shape and define them, and to communicate the essence of our ideas, specifying and fixing them to turn them into something buildable. Hence the importance in the development of any project and in his teaching not only of those drawings that shape that graphic documentation enabling the building of architecture in every aspect, but also of the early drawings, sketches, schematic drafts, ideograms and series of images that try to study its context... and already contain the first projectual idea, clear and definitive, anticipating the formalisation of the project and sensing some material, building and structural conditions.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

On the Cultivation of Learners’ Competence of Critical Thinking in College English Teaching

Cultivation of learners’ critical thinking competence in college English teaching meets the needs of quality education for the high-quality talents for our society. The development of critical thinking skills is of great importance for learners to become more autonomous, independent, critical, and reflective individuals. This paper focuses on the significance and strategies of the cultivation of learners’ critical thinking competence. It first analyzes the present situation of college English teaching, then it points out the delightful changes which have been made in the process of college English teaching reform and analyze that these changes bring about good opportunities to foster learners’ critical thinking skills. Next, it elaborates on the significance of the integration of the cultivation of critical thinking ability into college English teaching and summarizes that the cultivation of critical thinking competence can promote learners’ language proficiency, language learning efficiency and broaden their horizons. Finally, this paper provides several constructive suggestions on how to foster learners’ critical thinking competence in practical teaching process.

Teaching and Learning for this Moment: How a Trauma Informed Lens Can Guide Our Praxis

In this time of COVID-19, continued and relentless violence against BIPOC, organized resistance by many young people, and violent institutionalized attempts to suppress resistance, demonstrations and social change movements, what should educators be thinking about as we return to our college classrooms? In this short piece, we share our thinking and experience about our students’ psycho-social needs and our belief that faculty must be focused both on students’ and faculty’s socio-political context and students’ and faculty’s emotional wellbeing as we think about teaching and learning for this moment

Student-Centered, Interactive Teaching of the Anglo-Saxon Cult of the Cross

Although most Anglo-Saxonists deal with Old English texts and contexts as a matter of course in our research agendas, many of us teach relatively few specialized courses focused on our areas of expertise to highly-trained students; thus, many Old English texts and objects which are commonplace in our research lives can seem arcane and esoteric to a great many of our students. This article proposes to confront this gap, to suggest some ways of teaching a few potentially obscure texts and artifacts to undergrads, to offer some guidance about uses of technology in this endeavor, and to help fellow teachers of undergraduate Old English to develop ways to impart some transferable skills and modes of critical thinking to unsuspecting students. [excerpt

Investigating children\u27s multiplicative thinking: implications for teaching

Multiplicative thinking is a \u27big idea\u27 of mathematics that underpins much of the mathematics learned beyond the early primary school years. This article reports on a recent study that utilised an interview tool and a written quiz to gather data about children\u27s multiplicative thinking. Our research has so far revealed that many primary aged children have a procedural view of multiplicative thinking which we believe inhibits their progress. There are two aspects to this article. First, we present some aspects of the interview tool and written quiz, along with some of findings, and we consider the implications of those findings. Second, we present a key teaching idea and an associated task that has been developed from our research. The main purpose of the article is to promote the development of conceptual understanding of the multiplicative situation as opposed to the teaching of procedures. In doing so, we encourage the explicit teaching of the many connections within the multiplicative situation and between it and other \u27big ideas\u27 such as proportional reasoning and algebraic thinking

Legal Classics: After Deconstructing the Legal Canon

The debate over the canon has gripped the University in recent years. Defenders of the canon argue that canonical texts embody timeless and universal themes, but critics argue that the process of canonization subordinates certain people and viewpoints within society in order to assert the existence of a univocal tradition. Originating primarily in the field of literary criticism, the canon debate recently has emerged in legal theory. Professor Francis J. Mootz argues that the issues raised by the canon debate are relevant to legal scholarship, teaching and practice. After reviewing the extensive commentary on the literary canon, Professor Mootz criticizes the polemical structure of the debate and asserts that an appreciation of classical, as opposed to canonical, texts opens the way for a productive inquiry. He defines a classical text as one that both shapes contemporary concerns and also serves as a point of reference for revising these concerns. Classical texts enable critical perspectives rather than submitting to them, he continues, because they provide the arena for debates about issues of public concern. Using Hadley v. Baxendale as an example of a legal classic, Professor Mootz contends that the power of such a classical text is its ability to shape hotly contested legal debates. Our time . . . seems unpropitious for thinking about the question of the classic, for . . . it seems to be a simple either/or that requires merely a choosing of sides: for or against? back to the classics or away from them? Our time calls not for thinking but a vote. And it may well be too late for thinking about the classic in any case, for the vote is already in, and the nays have it