Heeding Grammar and Language-games: Continuing Conversations with Wittgenstein and Roth

This paper continues a conversation about Wittgenstein’s picture of language and meaning and its potential applications for educational theorising. It takes the form of a response to Wolff-Michael Roth’s earlier paper “Heeding Wittgenstein on “understanding” and “meaning”: A pragmatist and concrete human psychological approach in/for education,” in which Roth problematizes the use of the terms “understanding” and “meaning” in education discourse and proposes their abandonment. Whilst we agree with Roth about a series of central points, at the same time we maintain that he has taken his argument in directions antithetical to our reading of Wittgenstein’s work. We offer four points of departure, exploring themes of: (i) appropriate questioning; (ii) eliminativism; (iii) language-games and grammar; and (iv) productivity, explanation, and a science of learning. We conclude by discussing ways consistent with Wittgenstein’s thought to go on in thinking about education

Innovación en la educación rural: reporte de una experiencia de formación de profesores en servicio en el norte de Perú

Este artículo documenta la experiencia de un proyecto colaborativo para el desarrollo profesional de profesores rurales basado en el modelo de la investigación-acción que se implementó durante el 2004 el Programa de Mejoramiento de la Educación Básica (Promeb) en Piura, Perú. El programa se desarrolló mediante un acuerdo de colaboración norte-sur entre tres universidades del continente americano y con el financiamiento otorgado por la Agencia Canadiense de Cooperación Internacional (ACDI). El trabajo aborda tres temáticas centrales: a) describe el contexto de la escuela rural en el Perú y los objetivos y características del proyecto Promeb; b) presenta el modelo de formación de profesores adoptado; y c) hace una revisión de las experiencias de investigación-acción desarrolladas por los participante

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Resisting the Current

Non

Collegial Conversations at a Time of COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, citizens and social institutions have been called into action. Questions of the future of school and an appropriate educational response to the pandemic have been widely discussed and debated. As scholars of science education, subjects particularly relevant to educating about the virus and its transmission, we discuss the roles and responsibilities of science education during pandemic. The format of this paper is a dialogue. We discuss theoretical positions related to science education and the pandemic, inequalities and injustices, recent anti-Black racism protests, and concrete pedagogical responses. As our discussion progressed, we increasingly recognize teachers and students as crucial agents in developing community-grounded, critical place-based, educational responses, recognising and addressing injustices related to differential global and local realities experienced during the pandemic

Anti-capitalist/Pro-communitarian Science & Technology Education

Many of us live in a hyper-economized world, in which personal identities and routine practices aresignificantly oriented towards production and consumption of for-profit goods and services. Extremeconsumerism appears to be strongly associated with many personal, social and environmental problems. It isapparent that professional science and science education help facilitate this problematic hypereconomization.Briefly, science education tends to emphasize generation of knowledge producers, includingengineers, scientists and other symbolic analyzers — who, in turn, develop and manage mechanisms ofproduction of goods and services. At the same time, fields of professional science (e.g., via data-mining andmarketing) and science education (e.g., via guided discovery inquiries) orient citizens towards habits ofunquestioning and enthusiastic consumption of goods and services. Central to this system of problematic forprofithyper-consumerism appear to be epistemological and ethical considerations. Science, for example,often is seen — largely misleadingly — as a very systematic and decontextualized process generating highlyeffective and unproblematic products/services that can contribute greatly to individuals’ wellbeing. In thispaper, we counter these epistemological and ideological stances through argumentative support — partlythrough summaries of two educational case studies (Science and the City and STEPWISE) — forcommunitarianism. Under this philosophy, knowledge is seen as historically and temporally complex, perhapsleading us to a communalist (if not altruistic) ethical position with regards to the wellbeing of individuals,societies and environments. Ramifications of these positions for science education may include: Equity,Diversity, Holism, Breadth, Depth, Empowerment, Self-determination, Enlightenment, and Responsibility