Shattering the subject silos: learning about big questions and epistemic insights

What insights do we expect future citizens to call on when they encounter new opportunities and challenges? How can schools best prepare students to make decisions rationally and compassionately in an increasingly technological and interconnected world? Education to date has tended to focus on helping students to master key concepts drawn from knowledge we already know. Our choices about what to teach have been shaped around objectives we can test. The agenda for schools going forward is to teach and assess a deeper understanding of how to construct and test knowledge, both within and also across disciplinary boundaries (OECD 2018). Research conducted has clarified some of the gaps and misperceptions that currently exist in students’ ideas and reasoning about scholarship and knowledge (Billingsley et al 2013). For example, secondary students can confidently describe activities they expect to do in science lessons, however, their confidence wanes if asked to frame a question that is a good one to investigate scientifically. Some of the gaps in students’ epistemic insight (or ‘knowledge about knowledge’) arise because teaching and testing begins at the point where questions are already organised into subjects, topics and individual lessons. The Epistemic Insight Initiative is a response to pedagogical pressures and barriers like curriculum fragmentation which rob students of expertise that the curriculum says they should have. The Initiative includes a curriculum framework of key ideas about the nature of knowledge for each age group from primary to secondary that provide strategies to develop students’ curiosity and insight into different types of questions including big questions that bridge science, religion and the wider humanities (Billingsley et al 2018)

Changing Student Perceptions To Increase Success In Alternative Education Settings

The question addressed throughout this research project is, how do teachers in alternative school settings build strong relationships with at-risk students in order to alter their negative perceptions of schooling? This capstone explores alternative education and how it best serves at-risk students. The author’s primary influence comes from her own experiences as an at-risk youth, school transitions, and relationship building with teachers throughout her educational journey. The research for this project focused on using a mixed methods approach with a sequential explanatory design model to document the experiences and changes to students’ school and teacher perceptions, while transitioning from a traditional high school to an alternative school setting. The data collected through research indicates that students can find greater success, socially and academically, in settings where priority is given to building strong positive relationships. The author concludes that positive relationship building between teachers and students is crucial to ensuring student success, in all areas of education, but especially among the most at-risk learners

The Viking Dialogue Narrative: Egil’s Saga and Storytelling

Egil’s Saga invites inquiry about its composition with its unique use of poetry and prose. Its origins in the traditions of the Icelandic sagas grounds the text within a historical and cultural context that, while still under debate, guides the student of the Icelandic sagas in understanding the likely authorial purpose and intent behind the structure and motives behind the sagas and their tellers/writers. Egil’s Saga’s composition not only retells the life narrative of its titular poet but speaks to the purpose of storytellers and their craft

Nurturing epistemic agency through interdisciplinary enquiry

Epistemic knowledge describes what student-teachers and their pupils learn about the methods, processes and norms of thought related to distinct disciplines. OECD considers such knowledge imperative for the 21st century (OECD, 2018, 2021). Epistemic knowledge enables student-teachers and their pupils to think and act like scholars. It provides relevance and purpose to their learning and develops ‘disciplinary knowledge’ (Ofsted, 2021). The Epistemic Insight (EI) initiative at Canterbury Christ Church University allows student-teachers to create pedagogies for developing pupils’ epistemic insight and agency in schools (Billingsley, Nassaji et al., 2018). Three case studies illustrate how student-teachers could become research-active practitioners with the tools to develop children’s epistemic curiosity and interdisciplinary thinking. Student-teachers explored the impact of teaching approaches that cross disciplinary boundaries in placement schools. The first case study illustrates the potential of scientific observation for furthering primary student-teachers understanding of the nature of science. With this understanding, they can support their pupils' articulation of the importance of observations in advancing scientific knowledge. The other two emphasise how primary and secondary classroom-based research projects enable student-teachers to investigate their epistemic insight. In each case study, student-teachers gain the agency to research aspects of their teaching and respond to the unique perspectives of their pupils. Such experiences prepare student-teachers to become leaders of learning and reflective practitioners

Flexible autonomy: an online approach to developing mathematics subject knowledge for teachers

This paper uses an adaptation of Brookfield’s (2017) lenses to critically reflect upon a Subject Knowledge Enhancement Course designed and taught by the authors. Learning occurs through a synthesis of asynchronous engagement with online e-learning modules, weekly synchronous tutorials and self-reflection following formative and summative assessment opportunities. Interrogating the course design, learner feedback and observation, and tutor pedagogic choices through connectivist and social constructivist learning theory, the paper concludes that the common perceived learning gains occur through the flexibility in learning, and the supported autonomy that learners are given. Further developments in our offer should therefore aim to improve these opportunities for learners where possible

El estudio de polinomios en el nivel medio

El siguiente trabajo comunica la experiencia de práctica docente llevada a cabo por Katia Torres y Franco Hazeldine en el marco de la asignatura Metodología, Observación y Práctica de la Enseñanza del Profesorado de Matemática. El mismo se divide en dos partes. En la primera se presenta una descripción de las prácticas realizadas en dos cursos de 4to del nivel secundario de una institución de gestión privada, donde se trabajó con el tema Polinomios. En esta sección se desarrolla la planificación de las clases, las actividades propuestas y producciones de los alumnos y sus posteriores evaluaciones. En la segunda parte, se analiza una problemática surgida en las prácticas tomando material teórico como referencia. Dicha problemática está relacionada con la producción de lenguaje algebraic

Trends and determinants of top pay in the New Zealand public and private sectors, 1995–2014

This article analyses recent trends and determinants of chief executive (CEO) pay in the New Zealand public sector, and of numbers and pay of senior managers in the sector. Comparisons are made with the listed company private sector. It turns out that both CEO pay growth and numbers of senior managers in the public sector have lagged behind those in the private sector, while senior manager pay has moved ahead