The use value of real-world projects: Children and community-based experts connecting through school work

In this paper we discuss how the products of student work during long-term, interdisciplinary curricular units at King Middle School, a grades 6-8 public school in Portland, Maine, through their aesthetic qualities, transformed people’s understanding of what children were capable of. We argue that, to effectively understand student work of this type, ‘cognitive’ and ‘practical’ criteria for evaluation – i.e., as a supposed indicator of what students need to know and be able to do – fail to convey the actual, substantive value of the work, rendering it relatively static and meaningless like much conventional schoolwork. Instead, we argue that aesthetic criteria can help to adequately understand and assess community-based, project work. Moreover, focusing only on student learning throughout the production process occludes the importance of collaboration, communication, and dialogue with an audience: in this case, community experts whose goals and interests must be accommodated as students do their work. The aim of the article is twofold: 1) to present a coherent picture of student project work that adequately captures its complexity both in the process of its production, and in its use-value upon completion; and 2) to argue for the importance of aesthetic criteria in planning and assessing student projects

Unalienated Recognition as a Feature of Democratic Schooling

The current era of standards and accountability in U.S. public schooling narrows recognition and assessment to an almost exclusive focus on the production of test scores as legitimate markers of student achievement. This climate prevents rather than encourages democratic forms of exchange within and across social worlds. Via a case study of one student’s experience in a project on the civil rights movement, I present the concept of unalienated recognition to describe a form of democratic exchange that centers on what students produce through community-based projects

Stories worth telling: How one school navigates tensions between innovation and standards

This dissertation examines the cultural practice of assessment at King Middle School, a grades 6--8 school in Portland, Maine. I trace this school\u27s reform efforts over 23 years, within the current development of school-wide practices over time, in relation to making work public. I used a sociocultural framework, which allowed for an examination of the situation-as-a-whole, to see learning as distributed among people, time and objects, and to view artifacts of student work as boundary objects ---sites of negotiation among people from different, but related, social worlds. A sociocultural perspective also allowed for an expansive notion of assessment that included not just individual classroom strategies or school-wide practices, but also the system of assessment across communities. I adopted a grounded theory approach to data collection and analysis. My research yielded a mid-level theory about how sharing work with audiences---and the resulting recognition---shapes students, teachers, institutions and communities. Accordingly, this theory also describes a dialectic process---how institutions, communities, teachers and students shape the cultural practice of assessment. In line with a sociocultural perspective, I also found that recognition was not simply something produced through student work, but was an inherent feature of the activity. In conclusion, I share implications on three levels: conceptual, methodological and practical. Conceptually, I offer a developmental understanding of recognition in which recognition can be seen as a rich site of acknowledgement for contributions to, and membership in, communities. My practical findings include recommendations for policy, schools and classrooms such as: (1) Allowing multiple types of evidence to \u27count\u27 as measures of academic achievement; (2) intentionally perforating the traditional boundaries of school; (3) creating opportunities for students to engage in reciprocal caring; and (4) seeing assessment as integral to, rather than separate from, learning

The Use-Value of Real-World Projects: Children and Local Experts Connecting Through School Work

In this paper we discuss how the products of student work during long-term, interdisciplinary curricular units at King Middle School, a grades 6-8 public school in Portland, Maine, through their aesthetic qualities, transformed people’s understanding of what children were capable of. We argue that, to effectively understand student work of this type, ‘cognitive’ and ‘practical’ criteria for evaluation – i.e., as a supposed indicator of what students need to know and be able to do – fail to convey the actual, substantive value of the work, rendering it relatively static and meaningless like much conventional schoolwork. Instead, we argue that aesthetic criteria can help to adequately understand and assess community-based, project work. Moreover, focusing only on student learning throughout the production process occludes the importance of collaboration, communication, and dialogue with an audience: in this case, community experts whose goals and interests must be accommodated as students do their work. The aim of the article is twofold: 1) to present a coherent picture of student project work that adequately captures its complexity both in the process of its production, and in its use-value upon completion; and 2) to argue for the importance of aesthetic criteria in planning and assessing student projects

Using academic notebooks to support achievement and promote positive environments in differentiated classrooms

Authors Examine How the Use of Academic Notebooks Impacts Collaborative Learning Experiences of Young Adolescent

The normalization of online campaigning in the web.2.0 era

This article is based on a comparative study of online campaigning and its effects by country and over time, using four of the largest European Union member states (France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom) as a case study. Our research explores the extent of embeddedness of online campaigning, the strategic uses of the whole online environment and in particular the use of the interactive features associated with web.2.0 era. However, our research goes beyond studies of online campaigning as we also determine whether online campaigning across platforms matters in electoral terms. Our data support the normalization hypothesis which shows overall low levels of innovation but that the parties with the highest resources tend to develop online campaigns with the highest functionality. We find that there is a vote dividend for those parties which utilized web.2.0 features the most and so offered visitors to their web presence a more interactive experience

Enhancing fidelity in adventure education and adventure therapy

Although the importance of addressing and evaluating treatment and program fidelity is clearly emphasized in the literature on psychology, education, and health, little attention has been given to fidelity in adventure literature or research. Program fidelity refers to whether or not, and how well, a specific intervention or program was implemented as planned. This article provides a background on fidelity, including program adherence and competence, factors that affect fidelity, and ways that adventure practitioners as well as evaluators can be intentional in addressing and measuring fidelity in adventure programming and research

Nel Noddings’ Care Theory and Outdoor Education

This article offers a comprehensive introduction to Nel Noddings’ care theory, examining specific examples of when care theory can be useful for both analyzing current practices and establishing a way forward to strengthen the presence of Noddings’ care theory in Outdoor Education (OE). A broad-based approach was taken as a means to initiate further discussion and promote research of Nodding’s care theory in OE, including its potential and implications