A Positioning Theory Analysis of Interaction Surrounding Design Failures in an Elementary Engineering Club

This qualitative study applies Positioning Theory to identify positions that mediate the experiences of design failure within the context of an afterschool engineering club (EC) with elementary students diverse in language, race, ethnicity, gender, and academic abilities. We ask: (1) What kinds of structural design failure and failure responses did participants in EC experience? and (2) What are students’ and teachers’ positions in relation to responses to design failure? Types of positions (e.g., builder, tinkerer, idea-elicitor, director, observer) were identified in relation to children’s and teachers’ actions and speech in response to structural design failure during EC. Participants included 12 third-grade students and four teachers involved in EC for eight weeks. Data sources include audio transcripts, video, and field notes. Twenty-four design failure episodes were identified and transcribed multimodally from video, followed by coding of episodes using a multimodal Positioning Theory analytical framework. Findings discuss the kinds of engineering design actions and associated positionings unfolding in response to failure as well as the positions mediating teacher and student responses to design. We highlight the importance of student and teacher mediation as well as how Positioning Theory can be used to expand our understanding of (re)positionings that can occur within responses to design failure. Specifically, elementary engineering curricular materials must create the context to support the range of positions taken up in response to design failure. This includes explicit modeling of discursive actions surrounding design failure, multiple opportunities for students to experience and respond to design failure with time to improve beyond the design–build–test model, and support for teachers to address the range of students’ responses to design failures knowledgeably and flexibly

Schema theory revisited

During the 1970s, schema theory gained prominence as reading researchers took up early work by cognitive scientists to explore the role of schemas in reading. In the 1980s and ’90s, the field shifted as researchers increasingly used sociocultural theories, particularly the work of L. S. Vygotsky, to frame investigations of literacy. This article provides a brief review of schema theory as situated in literacy studies. The authors review various conceptions of schema theory to consider how recent social and cultural perspectives might prompt reconsideration of schemas as transactional and embodied constructs. Concomitantly, they explore how earlier conceptions of schema theory may assist researchers in their articulation of concepts such as ideal and material tools and the role of activity in Vygotsky’s work. The article concludes with considerations of implications for future work

Visual Communication : Vol. 15, No. 4, November 2016

1. A multimodal analysis of storyline in "The Chinese Professor" political advertisement : narrative and positioning in economic hard times 2. Chilean school facades : aesthetic matrixes, educational insights 3. Ruin in the films of Jia Zhangke 4. A pragmatic cognitive model for the interpretation of verbal-visual communication in television news programmes 5. "Plus de figures" On Saussure\u27s use of images Etc

Intersecting Engineering and Literacies: A Review of the Literature on Communicative Literacies in K-12 Engineering Education

Given the increased attention on pre-college engineering education and its disciplinary nature pertaining to language, discourses, and communicative practices, this state-of-the-art literature review focused on findings of research articles informed by qualitative and quantitative data to foreground communicative literacies within engineering design teams at the pre-college level. A disciplinary literacies framework was used to interpret and analyze published works in this particular domain. A search, selection, and inclusion process typical for state-of-the-art reviews yielded 33 studies. Constant comparison and open-coding led to clustering studies under five overarching themes in ranked order of frequency of occurrence pertaining to: (a) engineering disciplinary communicative literacies in practice; (b) matters of access with populations underrepresented in engineering; (c) learning STEM content through engineering design; (d) affective responses to uncertainty and risk in engineering design; and (e) evaluating the quality of collaboration. With respect to the themes, we discuss possibilities of using literacy frameworks to deepen theoretical and methodological insights into the study of phenomena related to within-group communicative literacies in K-12 engineering spaces

Video Pedagogy in Action: Critical Reflective Inquiry Using the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model

Even though there is long-standing use of video in education to develop preservice and inservice teachers' reflective practices, teachers and those requiring teachers to reflect on video (e.g., teacher educators, state departments of education, or school administrators) must be mindful that it is not the video that makes the difference. It is the practice of reflective inquiry and engagement with video by the teacher that makes the difference. We, like many other teacher educators, have realized that at times our preservice and inservice teachers were reflecting at superficial levels—revisiting events but without the deeper perplexity and pondering that Dewey, Schon, and others have long called for teachers to engage in.This is the Table of Contents and Preface of the book published as McVee, Mary B., Lynn E. Shanahan, H. Emily Hayden, Fenice B. Boyd, P. David Pearson; with Jennifer Reichenberg. Video Pedagogy in Action: Critical Reflective Inquiry Using the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model. Routledge, 2018. Available online: https://www.routledge.com/Video-Pedagogy-in-Action-Critical-Reflective-Inquiry-Using-the-Gradual/McVee-Shanahan-Hayden-Boyd-Pearson/p/book/9781138039803 Copyright 2018 Taylor & Francis. Posted with permission