Towards a Theory of Practice: Critical Transdisciplinary Multiliteracies

About the book: Education institutions and organizations throughout the world are currently being held accountable for achieving and maintaining historically unmatched standards of academic quality and performance. Accreditation bodies; policy makers; boards of trustees; and teacher, parent, and student groups all place educational institutions and organizations under unprecedented accountability pressures. The aim of this volume is to explore and better understand how these pressures are impacting a broad range of social and cultural issues and, subsequently, how these issues impact student motivation and learnin

Republicanism In Coriolanus

Shakespeare\u27s Coriolanus is widely considered to be the most political of his plays. Scholarship on the subject of the politics contained within the play arrives at different conclusions. Samuel Coleridge believed the play to be politically impartial. Others believe it betrays an obvious vote of no confidence in the government of the age. Still others believe it is a resounding endorsement of the English aristocracy. This thesis will undertake to discover if more current scholarship, led by the work of Annabel Patterson, which purports that the play is actually an example of early stirrings of republican sentiment, is a viable conclusion to the discourse

A conceptual framework for the design and delivery of a university-level credit course by communications satellite

The past few years have seen increased interest in the use of communications satellites for delivering instruction at the postsecondary level. This study was conducted to (1) compile a set of guidelines for the use of course developers in designing, delivering, and evaluating a satellite course; (2) identify those colleges and universities in the United States with experience in using satellites for credit course delivery; and (3) determine the degree to which the actual practices of these institutions conformed with the guidelines;A literature review in the fields of instructional telecommunications, distance education, and adult education was conducted, and twenty-three guidelines were established. The universities that have delivered satellite courses in the decade of the 1980s were then identified. The population included the 24 institutions comprising the National Technological University (NTU) consortium and eleven other universities that have transmitted satellite courses not associated with the NTU. Completed survey forms were received from 21 of the 24 NTU universities and 9 of the 11 non-NTU institutions;The results documented a significant growth in the use of satellites for credit course delivery since 1984. The median number of receiving sites was 8 for the NTU group and 10 for the non-NTU group. Median enrollments were 13 for NTU courses and 68 for non-NTU courses, with a mean average enrollment per site of 2.0 students in NTU courses and 5.5 students for the non-NTU group. Course costs varied significantly;It was apparent that respondents were sincerely interested in maintaining course quality. However, some problem areas were identified. Needs assessments were rarely conducted prior to course development. Interactivity was minimal in NTU classes, due primarily to the practice of uplinking videotaped lectures. The visual component of most courses appeared to be underutilized. Student support services were limited. Training of faculty members was generally limited to the technical aspects of the system. Faculty efforts were largely unrecognized by promotion and tenure committees

Multiliteracies as transdisciplinarity curriculum practice

This study builds on and contributes to work around Multiliteracies approaches to literacy education. Although multiliteracies has been well theorised in recent years, few studies have researched the practical aspects of developing a curriculum of multiliteracies where students engage in transformed practice through multimodal design. The data contributes to the field of literacy research in describing how students move beyond engaging in critique to the multimodal design of a variety of school and media texts. Employing Bourdieusian concepts of social capital and academic field, the struggles around learning to inhabit certain school discourses are explored

Chinatown: globalization, hybridity and literacy education

In this paper, we examine some of the data from a 3-year study with students at a small, public middle school in New York City’s Chinatown. As part of a larger study of multiliteracies in a transdisciplinary curriculum (Albright, Purohit, & Walsh, under review), we undertook a project with 60 students to identify literacy practices in their lives—in and out of school. As the project progressed, we used data collected with students to decide on the next steps

Teaching Physical Concepts in Oceanography: An Inquiry-Based Approach

This supplement to Oceanography magazine focuses on educational approaches to help engage students in learning and offers a collection of hands-on/minds-on activities for teaching physical concepts that are fundamental in oceanography. These key concepts include density, pressure, buoyancy, heat and temperature, and gravity waves. We focus on physical concepts for two reasons. First, students whose attraction to marine science stems from an interest in ocean organisms are typically unaware that physics is fundamental to understanding how the ocean, and all the organisms that inhabit it, function. Second, existing marine education and outreach programs tend to emphasize the biological aspects of marine sciences. While many K–12 activities focus on marine biology, comparatively few have been developed for teaching about the physical and chemical aspects of the marine environment (e.g., Ford and Smith, 2000, and a collection of activities on the Digital Library for Earth System Education Web site [DLESE; http://www.dlese.org/library/index.jsp]). The ocean provides an exciting context for science education in general and physics in particular. Using the ocean as a platform to which specific physical concepts can be related helps to provide the environmental relevance that science students are often seeking. The activities described in this supplement were developed as part of a Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) collaboration between scientists and education specialists, and they were implemented in two undergraduate courses that targeted sophomores, juniors, and seniors (one for marine science majors and one including both science and education majors) and in four, week-long workshops for middle- and high-school science teachers. Support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation\u27s Division of Ocean Sciences Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE), grant number OCE-0528702. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF