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Book part
Publication date: 3 October 2015

Olivia Christensen and Kelly Gast

Classist perspectives embedded in our meritocratic society permeate early childhood education. Curricula, instructional practices, and classroom interactions have the potential to…

Abstract

Classist perspectives embedded in our meritocratic society permeate early childhood education. Curricula, instructional practices, and classroom interactions have the potential to send messages to children about who and what is valued by society; frequently influenced by the characteristics and abilities of a middle-class child. In order to best serve the needs and abilities of children from any social class, early childhood educators should be well versed in social-class sensitive pedagogy, a pedagogy that helps teachers to be inclusive of social class diversity in their classrooms. This chapter argues that aspects of Montessori theory, such as the four planes of development and the prepared adult, complement social-class sensitive pedagogy in ways that all early childhood educators may apply to their own teaching.

Details

Discussions on Sensitive Issues
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-293-1

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 October 2009

Associate and Vick

Visual representations of teachers and teachers’ work over the past century and a half, in both professional literature and popular media, commonly construct teachers’ work as…

Abstract

Visual representations of teachers and teachers’ work over the past century and a half, in both professional literature and popular media, commonly construct teachers’ work as teacher‐centred, and built around specific technologies that privilege the teacher as the active, dominant and legitimate principal agent in the educational process. This article analyses a set of photographs that represent an ‘alternative’ educational approach to normalised mainstream schooling, to explore the ways such practices might enact pedagogy within different social relations. Butler’s discussions of performativity and Foucault’s concept of technologies of self, offer a theoretical framework for understanding the educative and political work such visual representations of teachers work might perform, in the construction of capacities to imagine what teachers’ work looks like, with implications for capacities to enact teaching. The photographs analysed present a pedagogy in which the teacher is less visibly central and less overtly directive in relation to children’s learning than in normalised pedagogy. Thus, in important respects, they offer material from which to construct a different vision of what teachers’ work looks like, and, consequently, to enact teachers’ work differently. In this article I explore a set of photographs of Montessori methods at Blackfriars School in Sydney in the early twentieth century. I do so in order to establish whether such photographs offer a representation of teaching that differs significantly from conventional ‘normalised’ understandings of teachers’ work. This in turn is intended to inform one part of a transformative agenda to address problematic aspects of contemporary schooling.

Details

History of Education Review, vol. 38 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0819-8691

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 21 November 2015

Eeva Kaisa Hyry-Beihammer and Tina Hascher

This chapter focuses on teaching practices used in multigrade classes and the importance of them being incorporated in teacher education as promising pedagogies for future use…

Abstract

This chapter focuses on teaching practices used in multigrade classes and the importance of them being incorporated in teacher education as promising pedagogies for future use. Multigrade classes – defined as classes in which two or more grades are taught together – are common worldwide. Hence, there is a need for teacher candidates to become familiar with how to teach in split grade classrooms. However, research on multigrade teaching as well as its development in teacher education studies has been neglected, even though multigrade teachers need special skills to organize instruction in their heterogeneous classrooms. We argue that in successful multigrade teaching practices, the heterogeneity of students is taken into account and cultivated. Based on content analysis of teacher interviews conducted in Austrian and Finnish primary schools, we recommend teaching practices such as spiral curricula, working plans, and peer learning as promising teacher education pedagogies for future multigrade class teaching. We also suggest that the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multigrade teaching should be further studied by researchers and educators.

Details

International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part C)
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-674-4

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Case study
Publication date: 3 March 2021

Heatherjean MacNeil, Amanda Wiehe Lopes, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan and Anne Douglass

The information presented in this case was gathered through interviews and observations carried out during the time Ms Joy attended the Initiative for A Competitive Inner City…

Abstract

Research methodology

The information presented in this case was gathered through interviews and observations carried out during the time Ms Joy attended the Initiative for A Competitive Inner City business support program in 2017. In addition, focus groups that took place after the program provided important information and insights into her decision-making process and business goals. Additional interviews were conducted in 2018 and 2019 after the business program ended to gain in-depth knowledge of Ms Joy’s entrepreneurial journey.

Case overview/synopsis

This case details the experiences of Winsome Joy in recognizing market opportunities in the child care industry and then expanding into the educational materials industry. The case focuses on challenges related to founding and sustaining her business and the ways in which Ms Joy engaged in “opportunity recognition” and “effectuation” to become a successful entrepreneur. The case points out the challenges of the child care and early education field in terms of professional training, hiring practices and retaining qualified staff. It provides an aspirational role model who has overcome these challenges by finding and recognizing new market opportunities.

Complexity academic level

This case is relevant for undergraduate and graduate courses in entrepreneurship.

Details

The CASE Journal, vol. 17 no. 5
Type: Case Study
ISSN:

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 2005

André Frank Zimpel

A deeper understanding of cognitive development in the situation of a neither‐nor‐dilemma is the purpose of this paper.

Abstract

Purpose

A deeper understanding of cognitive development in the situation of a neither‐nor‐dilemma is the purpose of this paper.

Design/methodology/approach

The approach is an evaluation of experimental studies of Montessori, Lewin, Piaget and my own studies of mental development under conditions of neurological and psychological syndromes with the help of von Foerster's mathematical models. Von Foerster suggested the use of specialized knowledge of mathematics and natural sciences – but without their methods of reduction – to solve the hard problems in humanities. One of the hardest problems in humanities is the question: How does a new pattern arise in the mind of an observer? Piaget theoretically influenced von Foerster and agreed with von Foerster's order‐from‐noise model as a principle of explanation for the equilibrium of cognitive structures.

Findings

The finding is an improved game‐theoretical simulation of Piaget's equilibrium theory: a remarkableness matrix. This matrix shows the way, in which a new cognitive pattern – or in other words: a new worldview – can arise by the reiteration of always the same experience.

Research limitations/implications

The research implication is a new way of mathematical description of this process.

Practical implications

The practical implications are improvements of educational settings and a basic research for a diagnostic manual for Eigen‐behaviors.

Originality/value

The newness of this paper is the connection of von Foerster's deductive simulation of Eigen‐behavior with Piaget's inductive probability model. The results may be helpful for educators, therapists, psychologists and other researchers in the field of cognitive sciences.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 34 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 May 2014

Kay Whitehead

In Australia as elsewhere, kindergarten or pre-school teachers’ work has almost escaped historians’ attention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the lives and work of…

Abstract

Purpose

In Australia as elsewhere, kindergarten or pre-school teachers’ work has almost escaped historians’ attention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the lives and work of approximately 60 women who graduated from the Adelaide Kindergarten Training College (KTC) between 1908 and 1917, which is during the leadership of its foundation principal, Lillian de Lissa.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is a feminist analysis and uses conventional archival sources.

Findings

The KTC was a site of higher education that offered middle class women an intellectual as well as practical education, focusing on liberal arts, progressive pedagogies and social reform. More than half of the graduates initially worked as teachers, their destinations reflecting the fragmented field of early childhood education. Whether married or single, many remained connected with progressive education and social reform, exercising their pedagogical and administrative skills in their workplaces, homes and civic activities. In so doing, they were not only leaders of children but also makers of society.

Originality/value

The paper highlights the links between the kindergarten movement and reforms in girls’ secondary and higher education, and repositions the KTC as site of intellectual education for women. In turn, KTC graduates committed to progressive education and social reform in the interwar years.

Details

History of Education Review, vol. 43 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0819-8691

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 19 October 2020

Jocelyn Bell Swanson

Storytelling began quite possibly as early as 15,000 bc, with cave drawings of animals and a man. Enduring because of its appeal to the human spirit and imagination, stories…

Abstract

Storytelling began quite possibly as early as 15,000 bc, with cave drawings of animals and a man. Enduring because of its appeal to the human spirit and imagination, stories illuminate and inspire as well as bridge a gap between fact and fiction. From the time we are little children, stories have taken us on a journey. Whether simple or complex, we use them to remember; we use them to create; we use them to disrupt. But there is a Part Two to the power of a story that can be found in telling it – in the act of becoming the storyteller. In either presenting a narrative or sharing the narrative as the character, one transforms from a learner to a teacher. And in that transformation is found deep understanding and learning. There is a story at every turn in education – in history, in languages, in maths, in science – everywhere. This chapter will discuss the tremendous value of the story, not just in the telling but as the teller.

Details

Living History in the Classroom
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-596-3

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Abstract

Details

Personalised Learning for the Learning Person
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-147-7

Article
Publication date: 5 June 2017

Sue C. Middleton

It is well-known that Beatrice Ensor, who founded the New Education Fellowship (NEF) in 1921, was a Theosophist and that from 1915 the Theosophical Fraternity in Education she…

Abstract

Purpose

It is well-known that Beatrice Ensor, who founded the New Education Fellowship (NEF) in 1921, was a Theosophist and that from 1915 the Theosophical Fraternity in Education she established laid the foundations for the NEF. However, little research has been performed on the Fraternity itself. The travels of Theosophists, texts, money and ideas between Auckland, India and London from the late nineteenth century offer insights into “New Education” networking in the British Commonwealth more broadly. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws on archival documents from the Adyar Library and Research Centre, International Theosophical Society (TS) headquarters, Chennai, India; the archive at the headquarters of the New Zealand Section of the TS, Epsom, Auckland; the NEF files at the archive of the London Institute of Education; papers past digital newspaper archive.

Findings

New Zealand’s first affiliated NEF group was set up by the principal of the Vasanta Gardens Theosophical School, Epsom, in 1933. She was also involved in the New Zealand Section of the Theosophical Fraternity, which held conferences from 1917 to 1927. New Zealand’s Fraternity and Theosophical Education Trust had close links with their counterparts in England and India. The setting up of New Zealand’s first NEF group was enabled by networks created between Theosophists in New Zealand, India and England from the late nineteenth century.

Originality/value

The contribution of Theosophists to the new education movement has received little attention internationally. Theosophical educational theory and Theosophists’ contributions to New Zealand Education have not previously been studied. Combining transnational historiography with critical geography, this case study of networks between New Zealand, Adyar (India) and London lays groundwork for a wider “spatial history” of Theosophy and new education.

Details

History of Education Review, vol. 46 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0819-8691

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2020

Ana Maria Davila Gomez and David Crowther

Inequities among people all around the world as well as indifference towards the environment continue to be a constant reality despite the efforts of some organizations worldwide…

Abstract

Inequities among people all around the world as well as indifference towards the environment continue to be a constant reality despite the efforts of some organizations worldwide for a better future. We consider that these efforts need to be amplified by many other organizations, therefore, the role of managers as practitioners who conduct organizations' actions need to be explored in the sense of their contribution for improving our reality. Hence, for a better future, a sustainable world that could be more fair, honest and concerned towards nature. To us, this calls into question the role of management education to this regard. Our research studies indicate that one way to contribute to this aim is by means of introducing in contents and pedagogical practices of our courses, the appropriateness of human values in students, as they are the future managers. In this chapter, we present some of these human values, sometimes considered by many religious traditions as spiritual values, which are: wholeness, forethought, solidarity and compassion. We conceptualize these values, and throughout critical reflections, we show how they are taken into account, or simply disregarded, in various courses and domains of Business Schools. At the end, we present some suggestions for pedagogical practices.

Details

CSR in an age of Isolationism
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-268-0

Keywords

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