Search results

The most recent alteration in engineering technology education in South Africa is the establishment of a new degree qualification – Bachelor of Engineering Technology. The new qualification standards alone do not give a clear distinction between knowers in the engineering technician and engineering technologist categories. This lack of clarity about what knower the new programme is intended to produce is a stumbling block to educators who need to plan, develop and implement the new curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise the intended knower dispositions for the new programme by carrying out a comparative analysis with the existing programme, thereby assisting curriculum designers particularly with development of effective scaffolding for engineering technology students.

In this paper, the authors conceptualise the intended knower dispositions for the new programme by carrying out a comparative analysis of the current and new exit-level outcomes. Each of the qualifications for the engineering technology programmes are comprehensively interpreted and analysed in this paper. This paper uses Bloom’s taxonomy and Luckett’s knowledge plane as lenses to perform the analysis and draw a distinction between knowers in the engineering technician and engineering technologist categories.

The analysis used in this paper suggests that the engineering technologist category exhibits a relative shift towards subjective and theoretical “ways of knowing”. It is found that the shift from practical ways of knowing to theoretical will evoke a shift from contextual to conceptual knowledge. The authors also flesh out how this shift could influence the new curriculum particularly with regard to developing effective scaffolding for engineering technology students. A useful tool for mapping these shifts in knowing is also established in this paper.

The most recent alteration in engineering technology education in South Africa is the establishment of the new Bachelor of Engineering Technology qualification. This qualification marks a paradigm shift in the nature of engineering technology education itself. In this paper, this paradigm shift is conceptualised. It is expected that the interpretation of the new qualification standards, and the influence of the shift in intended knower and exit-level outcomes on curriculum will be grappled with by engineering technology educators in South Africa in the coming years, as the new programmes are established around the country. This conceptual paper is significant because it marks the first work towards grappling these crucial and forthcoming issues in the country.

Drawing on a view of children's and teachers’ identities as stories to live by, the authors use one field text, taken from a year-long narrative inquiry, to show how children's and teachers’ stories to live by interact with milieu and subject matter in classroom curriculum making. Tensions around negotiating a curriculum of lives are identified as children's stories bump against teachers’ stories. Three children's stories to live by are represented through a set of images in found poetry. We return to the curriculum-making moment with wonders about each child's evolving stories to live by in relation with the particular subject matter. We outline four methodological dilemmas and ethical dilemmas encountered in studying multiple participants’ experiences nested within social, cultural and institutional narratives.

This study aims to adopt the institutional theory perspective to understand how institutional inconsistencies experienced by individuals translate into meaninglessness. Moreover, using the constructive development theory, it provides a plausible explanation to the enigma – why do some organizational members develop meaninglessness, while others do not?

This conceptual paper is based on a critical evaluation of extant literature that helped to develop the empirically testable propositions.

Grounded in the three types of mindsets as proposed in the constructive development theory, this paper suggests that, for socialized knowers, the degree of meaninglessness is directly related to the extent to which valued others perceive meaninglessness with respect to the institutional prescription creating a certain degree of inconsistency. The self-authoring knowers experience a higher degree of meaninglessness, if the alternative institutional prescriptions challenge the ones attached to their desired identity. While, the self-transforming knowers feel a higher level of meaninglessness, when they realize that the institutional inconsistency is strongly related to the experiences of others impacted by it.

This study adds a significant value to the streams of institutional and constructive development theories literature. It theorizes the variations in organizational members’ feeling of meaninglessness in the face of institutional inconsistencies while considering the shaping effects of field pressure and disposition. These propositions integrate the institutional theory and constructive development theory and present more socially acceptable justifications of the organizational members’ reaction of meaninglessness to institutional inconsistencies.

This chapter draws on data from two studies, one in Canada and another in the United States, focused on the experiences of pedagogical partnership as described by students traditionally underrepresented and underserved in higher education. These students argue that such collaborations with faculty hold promise for creating more inclusive and responsive practices. Using the concept of epistemic justice, the authors explore how partnerships can facilitate epistemological forms of equity and inclusion by (1) creating more equitable conceptions of knowing and knowledge that open possibilities for (2) fostering students’ confidence in their knowledge and willingness to share it with others. The authors argue that partnerships – in their epistemic, relational, and affective impacts – are one powerful way to recognize underrepresented and underserved students as “holders and creators of knowledge” (Delgado-Bernal, 2002, p. 106) and bring about greater epistemic justice in higher education.

Purpose – To describe four instructional components teachers can use to help create more inclusive spaces for struggling readers: (a) language use, (b) repositioning struggling readers as primary knowers, (c) making struggling normal, and (d) creating reading partnerships.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter describes research findings from studies of middle grades students in English language arts, and theorizes work with struggling readers on the basis of identity theories, research about identifying and utilizing students’ own funds of knowledge, and research about the conditions for building reading self-efficacy, motivation, and engagement.Findings – Provides detailed descriptions of how teachers’ language use, reading partnerships, making struggling a normal part of reading processes, and helping struggling readers become full participants in classroom life, including models, examples, and interview data with middle grades struggling readers.Research limitations/implications – Adjusting teachers’ language use in discussions of how to read, using students’ knowledge of reading and other topics from outside of school, enabling collaboration through peer reading partnerships, and positioning all students to understand that struggling with reading is normal and not necessarily a sign of low ability.Practical implications – This is a valuable source for classroom teachers who are seeking successful strategies for engaging and supporting struggling readers while also creating a positive classroom environment for reading instruction in general.Originality/value of chapter – The environment a reading teacher creates, including the language that teacher uses, can have a powerful and positive impact on struggling readers’ classroom identities, self-efficacy, motivation, and ability to engage successfully with reading processes in school.

To present a new approach to scientific thinking (paradigm) that avoids the shortcomings and inconsistencies of the prevailing Newtonian approach.

The signs of a science in crisis are reviewed and some of its shortcomings are compiled and connected to some misleading fundamental assumptions of the reigning paradigm of science. Calls attention to a current fundamental misunderstanding of the human capacity of observation – especially the negligence of the conceptual feedback loops of the human mind that make up the core of human learning capacity.

When using a subject‐oriented approach (SOA) to science, which takes off from the individual knowing the subject (methodological solipsism), it is possible to consistently construct a knower's science where all today's misleading assumptions can be successfully removed. This effort results in an abstract constructivist epistemology, where the reversed cause‐effect chain severely upsets the classically trained mind – especially in natural science.

There is a great deal of work left to examine the soundness of these ideas and pave the way for such a profound re‐orientation of traditional science that as a first step will be concerned with elucidating and explicating a wide range of problems and concerns in set and decision theory, logic, and mathematics. This is essentially to launch a research programme in these areas that as a next step includes all natural and social sciences that will appear in a new light when viewed from a first person, SOA.

There is no other way for science to evade the prevailing crisis but to involve, in its very Kuhnian sense, a radical change of paradigm. In this view, the realist confusion, which is responsible for the genesis of Cartesian dualism and a row of other inconsistencies met with intoday's science, will slowly vanish, as will the embarrassing gulf between the natural and social sciences as well as humanism. This new “world‐view” that seems radical to the scientist will appear natural to the everyday man – but its impact on human culture will be monumental.

The SOA to science is based on a reversed cause‐effect thinking that will have a heavy influence on the way people think about the world and is accordingly a concern of all human beings as well as each researcher – of whatever of discipline.

Many studies document the importance of learner-centered active teaching to improve college students' critical engagement with challenging problems presented by our information-rich twenty-first-century environment. Others indicate that students from less privileged backgrounds often struggle even in well-designed classrooms. What is lacking is a mechanism for understanding these divergent outcomes and designing courses that better meet the needs of the diverse students in the college classroom. In this chapter, an argument is presented for understanding college student learning and curriculum design through the lenses of epistemological development and behaviors of learning. The consensus model presents descriptions of four epistemological stages, creating a framework to help classroom practitioners and administrators better understand the abilities of their students. The foundational assumption is that using appropriate curricular components will support student engagement and epistemological and self-regulation growth. To support this assumption, the model is accompanied by research-supported activities and strategies that benefit learners at different developmental stages and with different degrees of self-regulation. Moreover, intentional and reflective teaching has the potential to improve faculty understanding about the nature of learning and acceptance of learner-centered pedagogies, which will also have positive consequences for students. The end result will be a more inclusive learning environment with improved outcomes for a wider range of students.

In this chapter, I take up Smith’s (2012) conceptualization of pedagogy as “the thinking and practice of those educators who look to accompany learners; care for and about them; and bring learning to life” (np). I first make visible my thinking about parents and families which underlies my pedagogy. Here, I use Green and Christian’s (1998) notion of “accompanying” and Noddings’ (2002) notion of “caring about” to elaborate on my metaphorical understanding of the position of educators as one of walking alongside parents and family members in the education and schooling of their children. I then reflectively turn to my practice with undergraduate teacher education students to discuss what I do, in my own walking alongside, to live out a “curriculum of parents” (Pushor, 2011, 2013) with students. I use my course, Teaching and Learning in Community Education, to provide a live example of my pedagogy in practice and, finally, I reflect on my experiences within this pedagogy of working with parents and family to pull forward considerations that I feel are worthy of “deeper noticing” (Bateson, 1995).

Since the publication of Schon’s (1984) landmark text The Reflective Practitioner, there has been a surge in research literature demonstrating reflection as an essential “best practice” for teachers. However, it often feels as if reflection is forced into our lives or we happen upon it at inopportune times, creating a contradiction of un/predictability – it is touted as crucial but afforded only particular spaces or purposes, while it sneaks into our lives at inappropriate times. From our perspective, this indicates underlying flawed modernist and humanist logics at work in conceptualizations of teacher and teachers’ work –we cannot plan on bodies in motion being predictable, and just because reflection seems located in the mind, does not mean the human is solely involved in reflection. The purpose of this chapter is to explore reflexivity as un/predictable in order to generate new possibilities and potential that are not bound by modernism’s penchant toward structure and humanism’s myopic self-awareness. Via co/autoethnography, we present individual narratives illustrating our relationships with reflexivity in various spaces of our lives. By using various types of mirrors (e.g., classic mirror, interrogation mirror, window as mirror, water as mirror) as analytical devices, we illustrate reflexivity as embodied processes that emerge un/predictably as we traverse various geotemporal–political locations and engage with other human, non-human and material bodies. By recasting reflexivity as dynamic and fluid, we raise possibilities for spontaneously incorporating reflexivity into teaching–learning and research, thereby untethering critical reflection from modernist and humanist logics that attempt to corral reflection into discrete activities and truncate its potential for transforming praxis.