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The Community of Inquiry as a Basis for Knowledge and Learning: The Case of History
Abstract
Science, social science, literary studies, philosophy, and history have all encountered challenges to the notion of "objectivity" in the wake of the Kuhnian revolution. These challenges, which problematize knowledge itself, have revived interest in the pragmatist notion of knowledge based in a community of inquiry. The related social constructivist recasting of curriculum thought in the past 15 years has been based not so much on the revision in the epistemology of the subject disciplines as in developments in learning theory and psychology. Using the discipline of history as a case study, this paper compares the scholarly community of inquiry with the community of inquiry in the classroom and examines the role of the teacher in negotiating the knowledge generated in each.
... However, the significant differences between the two communities of inquiry cannot be ignored. Peter Seixas (1993) points to the limits of the analogy between what he calls scholarly communities of inquiry and school-based communities of inquiry (p. 306). ...
... In the absence of another term, the two meanings can be separated by their function, which allows teachers to understand why, how, and when to move between the two communities. Whilst we, perhaps, should not conflate them conceptually, for the community of inquiry to achieve what Dewey and Lipman intended, teachers need to be active in both by mediating between them (Gregory, 2002;Seixas, 1993). ...
... 403). He refers to Seixas' (1993) claim that the teacher's subject knowledge 'entails a bridge between communities' that extends outward to scholars in the disciplines (experts) 'in one direction and to students in another' (p. 316). ...
The strength of democracy lies in its ability to self-correct, to solve problems and adapt to new challenges. However, increased volatility, resulting from multiple crises on multiple fronts – humanitarian, financial, and environmental – is testing this ability. By offering a new framework for democratic education, Teaching Democracy in an Age of Uncertainty begins a dialogue with education professionals towards the reconstruction of education and by extension our social, cultural and political institutions.
This book is the first monograph on philosophy with children to focus on democratic education. The book examines the ways in which education can either perpetuate or disrupt harmful social and political practices and narratives at the classroom level. It is a rethinking of civics and citizenship education as place-responsive learning aimed at understanding and improving human-environment relations to not only face an uncertain world, but also to face the inevitable challenges of democratic disagreement beyond merely promoting pluralism, tolerance and agreement.
When viewed as a way of life democracy becomes both a goal and a teaching method for developing civic literacy to enable students to articulate and apprehend more than just the predominant political narrative, but to reshape it. This book will be of interest to scholars of philosophy, political science, education, democratic theory, civics and citizenship studies, and peace education research.
... The term 'community of inquiry' has a long history that dates back to Charles Sanders Peirce, whose original formulation is grounded in the notion of communities of disciplinary-based inquiry 1 A shorter version of this paper was presented at 36 th Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia, held at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, 4-7 December 2008. The original conference presentation was a response to Seixas (1993), Sprod (2001) and Gregory (2002), and some of the ideas appear scattered elsewhere in an attempt to develop my ideas, which eventually resulted in this article. It has also been substantially re-written as part of a broader discussion in Chapter 4: Educational Philosophy of Burgh & Thornton (2021, forthcoming). ...
... Similarities notwithstanding, the significant differences between the two communities of inquiry cannot be ignored. Peter Seixas (1993) points to the limits of the analogy between scholarly communities of inquiry and school-based communities of inquiry (p. 306). ...
... In the absence of another term, the two meanings can be separated by their function, which allows teachers to understand why, how, and when to move between the two communities. Whilst we, perhaps, should not conflate them conceptually, for the community of inquiry to achieve what Dewey and Lipman intended, teachers need to be active in both by mediating between them (Gregory, 2002;Seixas, 1993). ...
In this paper, I introduce the narrow-sense and wide-sense conceptions of the community of inquiry (Sprod, 2001) as a way of understanding what is meant by the phrase ‘converting the classroom into a community of inquiry.’ The wide-sense conception is the organising or regulative principle of scholarly communities of inquiry and a classroom-wide ideal for the reconstruction of education. I argue that converting the classroom into a community of inquiry requires more than following a specific procedural method, and, therefore, that the wide-sense conception must inform the narrow-sense community of inquiry, as it provides the pedagogical guidelines for classroom practice. This is followed by a discussion on the dual role of the teacher as facilitator and co-inquirer in mediating between the two conceptions of the community of inquiry. Finally, I look at three different interpretations of John Dewey’s educational theory and practice that underpins philosophy for children. I conclude that without an understanding of the relationship between the two conceptions of the community of inquiry to guide the larger aims of an education that supports democratic ways of life, the teacher’s role remains unclear.
... Tellingly, most of these scholars credit the idea to Dewey, many do not mention Peirce, few acknowledge Lipman, and none (other than those whose work is related to Philosophy for Children) credit Sharp. Before and since Lipman and Sharp's contribution, Peirce's notion of the relationship of community to inquiry has been used to explain the epistemology of academic disciplines (see Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob 1994;Haack 1995;Seixas 1993) and the normative status of institutional, governmental, and political practices (see Barber 2003;Rutherford 1990;Shields 2003;Talisse 2004). Few of these scholars cite Lipman or Sharp, because most of them derived their understanding of the notion directly from Peirce and the secondary literature on him. ...
... Both the principles of objectivity and of the search for further reasons are also indications by Lipman, Sharp, and Oscanyan that an inquiry advances by means of self-correction. However, as an educational practice, the community of inquiry is necessarily different from inquiry conducted by a community of experts (see Seixas 1993, Gregory 2002). On the one hand, Lipman, Sharp, and Oscanyan's principle of finality articulates Peirce's conviction that "There is no higher court of appeal, nor higher standards in evaluating reasons" above "the community of inquirers" (1977:128). ...
Since the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) originated the idea of a ‘community of inquiry’ to describe and promote the norms of scientific inquiry, that idea has been used to characterize a wide variety of educational programs, academic disciplines, and institutional, governmental, and political practices. Matthew Lipman (1923-2010) and Ann Margaret Sharp (1942-2010) were the first to adapt the idea to an educational program, namely, philosophy for children. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to provide a summary of what Peirce meant by the idea—how he conceived of community in relation to inquiry—by explaining what I take to be the five most important elements of his theory of inquiry and three different roles of a community in relation to that theory.
... If so, how might reforms in historical thinking support this coexistence? In Canada, historical thinking is guided by a framework that evolved out of Seixas's (1993Seixas's ( , 2017) theoretical research around how historians 'tackle the difficult problems of understanding the past' (Seixas and Morton, 2013: 7). This call for educational reform was rooted in Canada's 'History Wars' of the 1990s, which took place at a time when nationalists such as Jack Granatstein (1998) and the Dominion Institute rallied for the revival of history in schools -for the purpose of promoting national unity (Seixas, 2010: 19). ...
... Reflecting on Seixas's (1993) intent for historical thinking, one of the most difficult problems that educators must now face is moving forward in Reconciliation. This is where the writings of Roger Simon (2005Simon ( , 2011Simon ( , 2013 become most relevant, as educators consider the intersection of two ontologies: (1) a disciplinary approach to history; and (2) Indigenous ways of knowing. ...
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada released a Final Report containing 94 Calls to Action. Included were calls for reform in how history is taught in Canadian schools, so that students may learn to address such difficult topics in Canadian history as Indian Residential Schools, racism and cultural genocide. Operating somewhat in parallel to these reforms, social studies curricula across Canada have undergone substantial revisions. As a result, historical thinking is now firmly embedded within the curricula of most provinces and territories. Coupled with these developments are various academic debates regarding public pedagogy, difficult knowledge and student beliefs about Canada’s colonial past. Such debates require that researchers develop a better understanding of how knowledge related to Truth and Reconciliation is currently presented within Canadian classrooms, and how this may (or may not) relate to historical thinking. In this paper, I explore this debate as it relates to Indian Residential Schools. I then analyse a selection of classroom resources currently available in Canada for teaching about Truth and Reconciliation. In so doing, I consider how these relate to Peter Seixas’s six concepts of historical thinking (Seixas and Morton, 2013), as well as broader discussions within Canada about Indigenous world views, historical empathy and Reconciliation.
... Document-based writing fits within the broader category of historical inquiry tasks. In inquiry tasks, students have the opportunity to construct their own knowledge and answer historical questions based on their analysis of a variety of sources, which can include historical documents, images, accounts of historians, history textbooks, or information on the internet or in media (Barton & Levstik, 2004;Saye & Brush, 2002;Seixas, 1993). Given that inquiry tasks are open-ended without a fixed answer, they are especially suited for eliciting historical reasoning. ...
... In this way, the task becomes more authentic in the sense of resembling the profession of the historian. In addition, other scholars argue that students should investigate their own questions because such questions are more relevant and meaningful to them (e.g., Barton & Levstik, 2004;Seixas, 1993). A study conducted by Logtenberg et al. (2011) showed that after students read an introductory text about a new topic, they were able to generate historical questions that could be used as a starting point for historical inquiry. ...
... Driven by advances in the 'cognitive revolution' and supported by the work of theorists such as Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner, international research in the last seven decades has provided educators with a comprehensive understanding of children's capacities for critical engagement with complex historical concepts and ideas. Across the globe, history curricula have been reshaped to reflect this (Seixas, 1993). A prime example of this was Curaclam na Bunscoile (CnB) (GoI, 1971a;1971b) which was explicitly child-centred and constructivist in nature; promoting a thematic approach to teaching and learning with a strong focus on locality. ...
... Historical thinking is the creative process that historians go through to interpret the evidence of the past and generate the stories of history (Seixas 2006). As part of the inquiry, historians seek not to violate the norms of evidence, but to adequately argue the claims of significance and to provide causal explanations amid relevant conditions (Seixas 1993). Moving away from the regurgitating of facts, history is no longer about memorisation but rather the development of heuristic and e-ISSN 2309-9003 epistemological skills (Wineburg 2001). ...
This paper explores the progression of second-order concepts in seven purposively sampled South African CAPS-compliant history textbooks. History knowledge encompasses both the substantive and procedural knowledge types, with second-order concepts forming an integral component of the latter. Textbook writers and educators use this knowledge in their domains without a predetermined trajectory. These concepts are not mere skills but fundamental notions guiding historical practice. Their meaningful integration into learning materials forms a necessary toolkit for historical inquiry. Drawing from a broader PhD study,1 a Bernsteinian (1990) framework and the 'big six' concepts articulated by Seixas and Peck (2004) are used to analyse the content of seven chapters, one per book, telling the story of the history of South Africa across grades three to nine in the foundation, intermediate, and senior phases of the South African school curriculum. A continuum was populated, articulating the strengths of the second-order concepts ranging from a powerful presence to those weakly incorporated. The findings indicate a sporadic presence of the six concepts-historical significance, continuity and change, cause and consequence, historical perspectives, and the moral dimension across the textbooks. There is a more inclusive focus in the senior grades and less so in lower grades. The concepts also lack continuous and cumulative development. If these 'structural' historical concepts provide the basis for historical thinking, it is unclear how they advance through the grades with increasing levels of complexity. The methodology of history is thus not a universal or one-size-fits-all endeavour but an iterative process inculcating concepts that are nuanced and inherently abstract.
... Social studies teacher preparation programs, which include the discipline of history, have increasingly focused on preparing future teachers to use inquiry-based approaches (Adler, 2008;Crocco & Marino, 2017;Seixas, 1993). There is also growing evidence that more history teachers are using inquiry-based approaches in their classrooms (Levy et al., 2013;Martell, 2020;Monte-Sano, 2008;Thacker et al., 2018). ...
In this study, researchers used a longitudinal multisite qualitative cross-case study to examine the beliefs and practices of five beginning teachers related to critical historical inquiry. They collected interview, observation, and classroom artifact data over a 5-year period, from teacher preparation through the teachers’ 4th year in the classroom. Using critical theory as the frame, the researchers found that the beginning history teachers tended to move along two pedagogical continuums: one related to the criticality of content and the other related to didactic- or inquiry- based instruction. Teachers were more successful in engaging in critical historical inquiry practices if they had well-developed conceptual and practice tools and had opportunities to teach within school contexts that supported the use of critical historical inquiry.
... On pourrait inverser les termes habituels pour illustrer ce rapport analogique : les savants s'enseignent les uns les autres au sein de leur communauté Former les enseignants à l'analyse didactique. Un cas en histoire Revue internationale de pédagogie de l'enseignement supérieur, 40(1) | 2024 (Fabiani, 2006;Seixas, 1993), et les étudiants construisent leurs savoirs. Sur cette base on fait l'hypothèse que si l'étudiante construit des problèmes didactiques elle apprend les concepts correspondants. ...
L’article analyse le cas d’une étudiante en master de formation d’enseignant d’histoire, en France, dans un dispositif de formation par la recherche qui la conduit à l’apprentissage de concepts de didactique de l’histoire. Ce cas vaut par son exceptionnalité, qui permet de dessiner des conditions à cet apprentissage par une approche de « didactique de la formation » (à la didactique de l’histoire) qui met en relation problématique le système didactique du dispositif : le savoir visé (concepts didactiques), les connaissances mises en jeu par l’étudiante et les savoirs mis en jeu par le dispositif de formation. Le cheminement et les traces du cheminement de cette étudiante fournissent en effet des données rares d’une analyse qualitative d’une formation professionnelle et universitaire par la recherche. Sous l’angle théorique de l’apprentissage par construction de problème et travail des obstacles épistémologiques, nous confrontons les données (écrits successifs de l’étudiante, transcriptions des échanges en séminaire et en entretien, échanges par mails, au fil de l’année) et nos hypothèses didactiques (l’obstacle que constitue pour les étudiants l’appréhension des situations d’enseignement séparant le fonctionnement des savoirs disciplinaires et les relations pédagogiques). Il ressort de l’analyse que la principale condition à l’apprentissage constaté dans l’appropriation des concepts par cette étudiante consiste en un processus de comparaison continue, au sens de la Grounded Theory (Glaser et Strauss, 1967), cadré par l’action du formateur. Ce qui ouvre des perspectives concernant la formation par la recherche.
... A helpful theoretical framework to consider this change in pedagogy is the community of inquiry. It posits a collaborative-constructivist classroom setting, whereby social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence are required by teacher and students to create meaningful learning experiences [4]. This framework helps to illustrate the motivation behind changing from a traditional or teacher-led classroom environment to an active learning classroom environment whereby students co-create knowledge with the teacher and their peers. ...
... A community of inquiry is generally defined as any group of individuals who are involved in the process of conceptual and empirical inquiry of a problematic situation, a group of people who collaboratively engage in critical discourse and reflection intended to establish personal meaning and confirm mutual understanding (coi.athabascau, n.d.; Seixas, 1993;Shields, 2003). Community of Inquiry (CoI) is based on the view of John Dewey about practical investigation, where individuals have a shared interest and commitment to solving problems through a method similar to scientific inquiry (Shields, 1999). ...
This study explores lecturers' perceptions of their teaching experience in
building learning activities to present a cognitive presence, especially in teaching
speaking online. Cognitive presence is an important element in the community of
inquiry. The community of inquiry and the cognitive presence are the instruction and
a guide to explore, analyze, and describe the lecturers' perception of the online
teaching experience. This qualitative research uses open-ended questions,
observations, and documents to collect and generate data related to cognitive
presence. The categories and descriptions of the data used a descriptive rating scale with low, moderate, and high perceptions. The research results show that cognitive presence has different justifications for each category of cognitive presence. Each lecturer has different experiences and responses. The lecturers' perception generally indicated moderate perception response in teaching online English speaking. It must contain studies, interpretations, speculations, and assessments of future research and prospects related to this important cognitive presence and the community of inquiry in learning.
Keywords: perception, cognitive presence, speaking learning, online
... SP refers to the ability of COI participants to identify with the community and each other in an online learning environment (Chanprasitchai and Khlaisang 2016;Garrison et al. SN Soc Sci (2023) 3:73 Page 3 of 16 73 1999) and defines the social context and interaction to achieve knowledge (Pardales and Girod 2006;Seixas 1993). CP represents learners' ability and higherorder thinking to build meaning through discussion and critical reflection (Akyol 2011;Garrison 2017). ...
The Community of Inquiry (COI) has become increasingly popular as a practical framework that promotes critical thinking and improves learning skills in online environments. In order to encourage the COI, this study proposes to investigate learning VALUEs based on teaching presence (TP), social presence (SP), and cognitive presence (CP), applying a VALUE creation framework as an assessment tool. A quantitative research approach was used to analyse 16 research works. Firstly, this investigation reviewed the activities of COIs as the vital link between COI and VALUE creation. Secondly, these activities were evaluated using Wenger et al.'s framework. The related results show that COI activities generate immediate, potential, and applied VALUEs, however, it does not positively promote reframing. The activities of TP positively promote immediate VALUE, especially its categories of promoting discourse and direct instruction. Most activities of SP promote both immediate and potential VALUEs, whose indicator of open communication positively creates immediate VALUE whereas the activities of CP promote multiple VALUEs. These findings address the research gap regarding how COI contributes VALUE by improving learning experiences in virtual environments and what determines the generation of the VALUEs. The benefits of this study will guide practitioners (teachers, online course developers, and instructional designers) who aim to design and match related activities of COI to maximise the VALUE creation.
... a . Seixas, 1993a;van Boxtel & van Drie, 2018a;van Drie & van Boxtel, 2008) . Das historical-reasoning-Modell von van Drie und van Boxtel (2008) stellt durch den Fokus auf konkrete Lernaktivitäten in Verbindung mit Wissensarten eine Präzisierung der Modelle von Gautschi und der FUER-Gruppe dar . ...
Klassengespräche haben ein großes Lernpotenzial hinsichtlich der Förderung
von fachlichen und überfachlichen Kompetenzen im Geschichtsunterricht. Zentrale
Qualitätskriterien sind dabei eine dialogische Gesprächsleitung und ein
diskussionsanregender Gesprächsanlass. Diese Studie untersucht, wie sich die
Gesprächsleitungskompetenz von drei Geschichtsleher*innen im Lauf einer einjährigen
Fortbildung zu dialogischer Gesprächsführung veränderte. Es wird dabei
aufgezeigt, wie gelingende dialogische Klassengespräche im Geschichtsunterricht
gestaltet werden können und wie sich die Qualität der Lernendenaussagen dadurch verändert. Anhand der Untersuchung können
Merkmale zur Gestaltung zukünftiger Fortbildungen für Lehrpersonen abgeleitet werden.
... In practice, CoI takes the form of group dialogue. In response to a difficult question, a group of individuals create a community where they participate in a process of critical examination of the key concepts behind the question by drawing on their own experiences, learning with each other by listening to what others say-a process whereby an intersubjective agreement on the resolution of the question emerges (see Seixas 1993). The practice of CoI is applied to various contexts. ...
Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy is the first book that brings together a wide range of methods used in the study of deliberative democracy. It offers thirty-one different methods that scholars use for theorizing, measuring, exploring, or applying deliberative democracy. Each chapter presents one method by explaining its utility in deliberative democracy research and providing guidance on its application by drawing on examples from previous studies. The book hopes to inspire scholars to undertake methodologically robust, intellectually creative, and politically relevant research. It fills a significant gap in a rapidly growing field of research by assembling diverse methods and thereby expanding the range of methodological choices available to students, scholars, and practitioners of deliberative democracy.
... In practice, CoI takes the form of group dialogue. In response to a difficult question, a group of individuals create a community where they participate in a process of critical examination of the key concepts behind the question by drawing on their own experiences, learning with each other by listening to what others say-a process whereby an intersubjective agreement on the resolution of the question emerges (see Seixas 1993). The practice of CoI is applied to various contexts. ...
Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy is the first book that brings together a wide range of methods used in the study of deliberative democracy. It offers thirty-one different methods that scholars use for theorizing, measuring, exploring, or applying deliberative democracy. Each chapter presents one method by explaining its utility in deliberative democracy research and providing guidance on its application by drawing on examples from previous studies. The book hopes to inspire scholars to undertake methodologically robust, intellectually creative, and politically relevant research. It fills a significant gap in a rapidly growing field of research by assembling diverse methods and thereby expanding the range of methodological choices available to students, scholars, and practitioners of deliberative democracy.
... In practice, CoI takes the form of group dialogue. In response to a difficult question, a group of individuals create a community where they participate in a process of critical examination of the key concepts behind the question by drawing on their own experiences, learning with each other by listening to what others say-a process whereby an intersubjective agreement on the resolution of the question emerges (see Seixas 1993). The practice of CoI is applied to various contexts. ...
... As a starting point to define the reference dimensions for effectiveness, we used the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. This framework evolves from social constructivism and interprets learning as the primary outcome of a process that takes place in a community with shared culture and values (Seixas, 1993;Garrison et al., 2000;Daspit & D'Souza, 2012). This approach is particularly suitable for evaluating management programs, and previous scholars in the field have applied it and tested it empirically (e.g., Arbaugh, 2008;Daspit & D'Souza, 2012). ...
With its combination of online and face-to-face interaction, blended learning is increasingly being employed in postgraduate education. To date, most empirical research on the topic has focused on the design and relative effectiveness of online versus in-person learning. Meanwhile, any exploration of the costs of its delivery has often been neglected. In this study, we propose a framework to assess the costs and cost-effectiveness of alternative designs of blended postgraduate programs, and then empirically apply it to an innovative blended Master of Business Administration (MBA) course as compared with similar MBAs taught at the same institution, with the differences lying in their proportions of online content and the intensity of their use. We applied the Community of Inquiry framework to show that the program with the most intensive use of online learning is also the most effective in terms of student cognitive gain. However, it is not the most cost-effective when compared to other, less online-intensive alternatives. We also found that this result depends on the scalability constraints imposed by the design of the programs. The implications of the scalability versus the quality versus the costs of blended education are then discussed.
... It should be noted however, that even at this time, these seminal researchers in this field were warning that in regard to the components of STEM, "integration of this multiple expertise in turn implies complex organisation" (Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 2012, p. 225). Into this milieu of educational potentiality, one that Seixas (1993) viewed as possibly becoming 'community inquiry', the STEM focus in Australia began to become somewhat realised in that computer education was introduced into many public schools, and the research into its application and impact was born. However, in this shift and apparent conjoining of disciplines the concept of multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary involvement was far from the usual case in most school levels and, in particular, in tertiary institutions. ...
... The occasions and groups that form the context for these studies differ from those of our own study in certain significant ways: They have typically been designed and led by university researchers or professional development experts rather than being naturally occurring activities of teachers' work; the occasions entail a more explicit, formal, and sustained focus on teacher learning; they reserve time and space for purposes of professional development; and the teacher participants may come together for professional development while not working together on a daily basis in the same school. Among the specialized programs of professional development that have yielded this promising body of research are programs grounded in teachers' investigation of children's mathematics learning (Fennema et al., 1996;Franke, Carpenter, Fennema, Ansell, & Behrend, 1998;Stein, Silver, & Smith, 1998.); a ''book club'' of high school English and social studies teachers in which teachers grappled with the nature of text and text interpretation in English and history (Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth, 2001); networks of teachers focused on the study of literacy practices (Florio-Ruane & Raphael, 2001;Greenleaf & Schoenbach, 2001;Lieberman & Wood, 2001) or teaching and learning practices in other disciplines (Brandes & Seixas, 1996;Pfeiffer & Featherstone, 1996;Rosebery & Warren, 1998;Seixas, 1993); teachers' deliberations on problems of student assessment (Gearhart & Wolf, 1994;Wilson, 1994); and a range of other teacher study groups (e.g., Clark, 2001). ...
Researchers posit that conditions for improving teaching and learning are strengthened when teachers collectively question ineffective teaching routines, examine new conceptions of teaching and learning, find generative means to acknowledge and respond to difference and conflict, and engage actively in supporting one another's professional growth. Yet relatively little research examines the specific interactions and dynamics by which professional community constitutes a resource for teacher learning and innovations in teaching practice. In particular, few studies go “inside teacher community” to focus closely on the teacher development opportunities and possibilities that reside within ordinary daily work. This paper draws on intensive case studies of teacher knowledge, practice, and learning among teachers of mathematics and English in two high schools to take up the problem of how classroom teaching practice comes to be known, shared, and developed among teachers through their out-of-classroom interactions.
... As Allender and Freebody (2016) assert, the difference between the academic discipline of history and school history is the importance of the interactional exchanges that occur between students and history teachers-the way that teachers destabilise student assumptions from public history or popular historical representation, the questioning of misappropriations of history, and the ability to apply heuristics as a means of generating their own interpretations. However, Seixas (1993) argued that social groups also play an influential role in a classroom community of inquiry, where social group dynamics can result in the potential to constrain more objective thinking as students may be influenced by their friendship or peer group ideologies in secondary school settings. If history education is to contribute to active citizenship, there is a need to reconceptualise our understanding to align with emerging civic practices of the twenty-first century. ...
A relationship between school history and notions of citizenship is evident in the Australian context. In this way, it is important to reflect on the nature of the subject of history (Körber, 2011) and how socio-political forces have impacted discourses relating to its aim and purpose (Goodson & Marsh, 1996). This paper seeks to consider how literacies are historically embedded in history (mandatory) syllabuses in New South Wales (NSW), and the implications of this for a conceptualisation of literacy that acknowledges the changing nature of communication, and as a result, participatory citizenship. Following the linguistic turn, and acknowledgement of the importance of language to social practice, a successful approach to literacy in secondary school contexts should consider the language and literacies required for specific subjects, rather than common or foundational areas of literacy (Lo Bianco & Freebody, 2001), as are often the focus of standardised literacy assessments. Positioned as a history of the present (Popkewitz, 2011), official curriculum documents are examined covering the period of the 1990s to the early 2000s, prior to the implementation of the first national curriculum. It was found that there was a distinct and explicit separation of notions of literacy and understanding in official curriculum, as well as presenting information communication technologies (ICTs) and literacy as distinct (and separate) competencies. It is argued that if history education is to contribute to active citizenship, there is a need to reconceptualise this idea to align with emerging civic practices of the twenty-first century.
... Ο δεύτερος παράγοντας φάνηκε ότι παρείχε ευκαιρίες για τη δημιουργία κοινότητας μάθησης μεταξύ των εκπαιδευόμενων εκπαιδευτικών, μέσα στην οποία οι τελευταίοι κατόρθωσαν σταδιακά να αντιλαμβάνονται, να μοιράζονται, να θέτουν σε διερώτηση, να προκαλούν, αλλά και να μετασχηματίζουν τις αρχικές τους αντιλήψεις (Borko, 2004· Μαμούρα, 2016. Πράγματι, ενώ οι εκπαιδευτικοί της ιστορίας δεν εργάζονται ως ερευνητική κοινότητα όπως οι ιστορικοί (Seixas, 1993), αυτή η προσέγγιση αξίζει να ερευνηθεί περαιτέρω. Το να εμπλακούν οι εκπαιδευτικοί σε κοινότητες πρακτικής που «κάνουν ιστορία», λέει ο Sears (2014: 18), έχει μεγάλη πιθανότητα να σπάσει τις αντιστάσεις μακροχρόνιων ανελαστικών γνωστικών πλαισίων και αντιλήψεων, και να αναπτύξει το είδος εκείνο της σύνθετης κατανόησης, που είναι προαπαιτούμενο για την καλλιέργεια ιστορικής σκέψης. ...
This paper discusses history teachers" perceptions of history as academic and teaching object, and the importance of these perceptions in selecting teaching practices, decisions and generally manners in dealing with their subject. The displacements of the conceptualization of history as academic and teaching object from modern to post-modern example today illuminate even more the importance of these teachers" perceptions. Do teachers know these displacements, so as to have some new benchmarks to negotiate their initial perceptions? This is the main argument of this paper: history teachers renew their teaching practices and are developed professionally, not when they are simply trained on new historiographical and didactic trends and shifts, but when they renegotiate their initial perceptions in relation to the relevant trends and shifts, in order to transform them fully or partially. Περίληψη Η εργασία αυτή πραγματεύεται τις αντιλήψεις των καθηγητών της ιστορίας για την ιστορία ως ακαδημαϊκό και διδακτικό αντικείμενο και τη σημασία αυτών των αντιλήψεων για την επιλογή διδακτικών πρακτικών, αποφάσεων και γενικότερων τρόπων αντιμετώπισης του διδακτικού αντικειμένου. Οι μετατοπίσεις των εννοιολογήσεων για την ιστορία ως ακαδημαϊκό και διδακτικό αντικείμενο από το νεωτερικό στο μετανεωτερικό παράδειγμα καθιστούν σήμερα ακόμη πιο κρίσιμη την σημασία των σχετικών αντιλήψεων των εκπαιδευτικών. Παρακολουθούν οι εκπαιδευτικοί αυτές τις μετατοπίσεις, ώστε να έχουν κάποια νέα σημεία αναφοράς για να επαναδιαπραγματευθούν τις αντιλήψεις τους; Από το ερώτημα αυτό απορρέει και το βασικό επιχείρημα της εργασίας: ότι οι καθηγητές της
... 66-67). As such, learning is shaped by the community activities supported by a shared culture and one in which the learner makes sense of learning based on the experiences and social interactions (Seixas, 1993;von Glasersfeld, 1989). The creation of a social space through these social relations enables individuals to make meaning of each other and the social world (Lefebvre et al., 1991). ...
The world of learning and teaching has changed tremendously as a result of COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has forced educational institutions to innovate their ways of teaching, learning processes and learner management and reimagine their approach to education. Learners are facing a similar transition to less familiar online environment and limited in-person interactions in a purpose-built physical environment. As these realities are sinking in, stakeholders are evaluating implications on the future of learning and teaching in higher education post COVID. This chapter adopts a qualitative approach to uncover deeper faculty and learner insights in three key dimensions – digital transformation of education, learner and faculty interactions, and learning and teaching experience. We will examine how disruption can lead to innovation in terms of how and when learners engage with digital content and activities to ensure that the learning outcomes are achieved. This includes looking at different ways of orientating learning to tertiary education experience and a holistic approach to the onboarding of students in the hybrid model of virtual with face-to-face experiences. From the faculty perspective, it involves looking at the kind of support and training required to be fully equipped for the digital world of study. Adopting a community of inquiry framework with essential face-to-face learning implies that strong capabilities will be a major differentiator in an already competitive higher education sector. A key driver of these changes is learner experience and the ability to effectively acquire skills and attributes for the new digital workplace.
... Ο δεύτερος παράγοντας φάνηκε ότι παρείχε ευκαιρίες για τη δημιουργία κοινότητας μάθησης μεταξύ των εκπαιδευόμενων εκπαιδευτικών, μέσα στην οποία οι τελευταίοι κατόρθωσαν σταδιακά να αντιλαμβάνονται, να μοιράζονται, να θέτουν σε διερώτηση, να προκαλούν, αλλά και να μετασχηματίζουν τις αρχικές τους αντιλήψεις (Borko, 2004· Μαμούρα, 2016. Πράγματι, ενώ οι εκπαιδευτικοί της ιστορίας δεν εργάζονται ως ερευνητική κοινότητα όπως οι ιστορικοί (Seixas, 1993), αυτή η προσέγγιση αξίζει να ερευνηθεί περαιτέρω. Το να εμπλακούν οι εκπαιδευτικοί σε κοινότητες πρακτικής που «κάνουν ιστορία», λέει ο Sears (2014: 18), έχει μεγάλη πιθανότητα να σπάσει τις αντιστάσεις μακροχρόνιων ανελαστικών γνωστικών πλαισίων και αντιλήψεων, και να αναπτύξει το είδος εκείνο της σύνθετης κατανόησης, που είναι προαπαιτούμενο για την καλλιέργεια ιστορικής σκέψης. ...
... La apuesta por una enseñanza por competencias en los años noventa del pasado siglo contribuyó al desarrollo de una serie de trabajos centrados en definir cuáles eran las competencias relacionadas con la disciplina histórica (Seixas, 1993). Desde entonces han proliferado los trabajos que abordan la explicitación de estas competencias, estudios de diagnóstico sobre su tratamiento en las aulas o su grado de adquisición por el alumnado, y el diseño de propuestas didácticas para su puesta en práctica con el alumnado. ...
El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la valoración del profesorado sobre las habilidades y competencias históricas que cree más relevantes para enseñar historia, y su comparativa en función a la etapa educativa en la que imparte la materia de Ciencias Sociales.
... The fourth dimension addresses the instruments used to evaluate history, and in the last dimension, the teacher's treatment of conflicting historical topics in the classroom is tackled. This second block is based at the theoretical level on the "Beliefs History Questionnaire", used by VanSledright and Reddy (2014) and on the identification of historical competencies carried out by Wineburg (1991) and Seixas (1993) and developed in the Spanish context by Domínguez (2015), Sáiz and López-Facal (2015), and Carretero (2019). In this work, specifically, we will present the results of the items of the third dimension of the second block, related to the opinion of teachers on the relevance of certain teaching resources when teaching history. ...
The objective of this article is to analyze teachers’ assessment of various resources used to teach history. The research methodology is of a quantitative nature with a non-experimental design using a questionnaire with a Likert scale. The non-probabilistic sample comprises 332 history teachers in Primary and Secondary Education in Spain. The analyses carried out are descriptive and inferential. The results indicate that the surveyed teachers value better the resources that imply a greater involvement of the students in the teaching of history and therefore more active methodologies. Specifically, the most valued resources were heritage, artistic productions and museums and, the least valued, video games, textbooks, and applications of historical content for mobile devices and tablets. The study concludes that heritage is a growing educational resource among teachers and shows that teachers are moving away from their perception of resources, which involve a more traditional methodology of teaching history.
... Många andra ämnesdidaktiska inriktningar har vuxit fram ur sina motsvarigheter i universitetsdisciplinerna, exempelvis historia där historiedidaktiken länge var en del av den historiska disciplinen (se t.ex. Schüllerqvist, 2005). Vi bär inte med oss hundraåriga, eller ens tioåriga, traditioner som växt fram i en ämnesdidaktisk gemenskap utan kämpar fortfarande med gränsdragningar till näraliggande gemenskaper som allmändidaktik, pedagogik och ämnesdiscipliner som statsvetenskap. ...
Social Science (Samhällskunskap) is the assigned school subject with the major responsibility for political education in year 1-12 (Sandahl, 2015c; cf. other Nordic countries in Christensen, 2011; Børhaug 2011). Even though Social Science is considered important and well established in schools, it has been described as in a “stage of crisis” for several decades due to its lack of a academic equivalent (Bronäs & Selander, 2002). Furthermore, researchers interested in social science education come from different communities of enquiry such as pedagogy and political science resulting in a diverse and sprawled research community. Departing from Michael Young’s (2013) notion of ‘epistemic community’, this article discusses the need to define and demarcate the research field of social science ‘didaktik’. Moreover, the article suggests a field of research interest that might help shape a community where researchers from different backgrounds can contribute. The argument is that a strong research community can provide answers to the alleged crisis of the school subject.
... Rather, learning is problematised and often characterised by iteration and recursion until new historical understandings are reached, making time a critical factor. It is important for history classrooms to be characterised by a network of teachers and students working collaboratively as a community of inquiry through various activities to build a good understanding of the discipline (Seixas, 1993). Meaningful and sustained engagement and interaction can guide students to improve their study of history, encouraging them to examine past issues for themselves in order to arrive at informed conclusions. ...
Purpose
Over the last few decades, there have been significant developments in history education, key among them being the recommendation for an inquiry approach to history teaching to improve students' ability to think historically. While the idea of historical thinking is widely researched, it appears that it has been approached from a conceptual perspective without a consistent focus on the mode of progression and the outcomes that the historical thinking concepts can achieve.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws from educational and historical theory and empirical research in history education to propose a framework that specifies the outcomes that a historical thinking classroom activity can aim to achieve.
Findings
The paper argues that the systematic deployment and mediation of disciplinary concepts and substantive knowledge are important means for achieving meaningful and relevant outcomes in history teaching. The paper highlights the need for teacher attention not only to historical theory but also to educational theory for an efficient outcomes-based history education.
Originality/value
This paper contributes not only to discussions on historical thinking but also to discussions on the stances of history which have attracted little theoretical discussion and research on their applicability to classroom teaching.
What are the distinctive characteristics of the discipline of history? How do we teach those characteristics effectively, and what benefits do they offer students? How can history instructors engage an increasingly diverse student body? Teaching History in Higher Education offers instructors an innovative and coherent approach to their discipline, addressing the specific advantages that studying history can bring. Edward Ross Dickinson examines the evolution of methods and concepts in the discipline over the past two hundred years, showing how instructors can harness its complexity to aid the intellectual engagement of their students. This book explores the potential of history to teach us how to ask questions in unique and powerful ways, and how to pursue answers that are open and generative. Building on a coherent ethical foundation for the discipline, Teaching History in Higher Education presents a range of concrete techniques for making history instruction fruitful for students and teachers alike.
This chapter argues for an approach to teaching History rooted in the ethical position foundational to the discipline. That approach is based on respect for our students and for the discipline; in it instructors encounter and learn from their students in the same way that they encounter and learn from historical subjects, and instruction in History, just like research in History, focuses not on controlling outcomes but on engaging in an ethically authentic process. It offers six approaches to instruction that can help build this kind of relationship between instructors and students, and between students and the discipline. These include consulting our students regarding their interests and aims; building instruction around the process of inquiry; making pedagogical use both of the breadth of the discipline and of its complexity, diversity, and epistemological and methodological divisions; focusing on teaching analysis, critical thinking, and interpretation; and bringing students to see their engagement with History not only as a process by which they master specific bodies of knowledge and methods of thinking but also as an open-ended intellectual adventure.
p> Abstract
Student satisfaction is one of the factors that influence student motivation and learning process. The more satisfied students are, the higher their motivation to complete their studies and have a better learning process. This study aims to see the effect of lecturers' collaboration level, lecturers' technical ability, and lecturers' online participation in the online classroom on student satisfaction. The research was conducted on active students of the Communication Science Distance Education study program in 2018 with a total of 88 respondents. Data were obtained through a survey consisting of 40 questions. The data were processed with the PLS method using SmartPLS software. The results obtained are lecturer collaboration, lecturer technical ability, and lecturer online participation in online classrooms have a positive effect on student satisfaction, with lecturer technical ability being the most influential factor on student satisfaction. Mastery of technology and the use of various methods of lecturer participation in online classrooms are recommended approaches for lecturers to take.
Bahasa Indonesia Abstrak
Kepuasan Mahasiswa merupakan salah satu faktor yang mempengaruhi motivasi dan proses belajar siswa. Semakin puas siswa, maka motivasi mereka semakin tinggi untuk menyelesaikan studi dan memiliki proses belajar yang lebih baik. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat pengaruh dari tingkat Kolaborasi Dosen, Kemampuan Teknis Dosen, dan Partisipasi Daring Dosen pada online classroom terhadap Kepuasan Mahasiswa. Penelitian dilakukan pada mahasiswa aktif program studi Pendidikan Jarak Jauh Ilmu Komunikasi di tahun 2018 dengan total responden sebanyak 88 orang. Data diperoleh melalui survey yang terdiri dari 40 pertanyaan. Data diolah dengan metode PLS menggunakan perangkat lunak SmartPLS. Hasil yang diperoleh adalah Kolaborasi Dosen, Kemampuan Teknis Dosen, dan Partisipasi Daring Dosen pada ruang kelas daring berpengaruh positif terhadap Kepuasan Mahasiswa, dengan Kemampuan Teknis Dosen yang menjadi faktor paling berpengaruh terhadap kepuasan siswa. Penelitian ini terbatas pada satu program studi saja, dan terbatas pada siswa yang aktif di tahun 2018.
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Cette contribution analyse les particularités du travail d’expertise en didactique des disciplines. L’analyse de la place et des fonctions de l’expert·e 1 permet de mettre en perspective le processus pour établir la légitimité scientifique et la validité didactique des publications à l’intérieur de la discipline de référence et dans une vision externe au champ disciplinaire et de l’environnement proche. Une recherche exploratoire montre comment les expert·es envisagent leur travail et montre les atouts et les limites de l’agir d’expert·e comme l’exercice d’une faculté professionnelle et académique de jugement et d’accompagnement.
After briefly reviewing key points in the preceding chapters, I come, finally, to the topic of education and practical questions around the cultivation of reasonableness within the context of a democratic society—indeed, I see reasonableness as a key normative component of both democracy and education. The concepts of community and dialogue are crucial here; taken together, they provide the ingredients for the educational paradigm known as the community of inquiry. Drawing on many years of involvement with Philosophy for Children, I provide a detailed analysis of the community of inquiry as a model for teaching and learning, in terms of its three main dimensions: the classroom environment in affective, social, and ethical terms—based on mutual respect, empathy and intellectual humility—the content of inquiry, and the procedures of inquiry. These dimensions, taken together, provide opportunities for students to construct “Big Questions” and their own (tentative) responses to such questions. I then move to clarify the relationships between thinking and inquiry, on the one hand, and speaking/listening and dialogue, on the other, arguing that these relationships are interdependent—where this interdependence is conceptual, rather than merely empirical. In order to clarify this crucial point, I offer a brief analysis of several alternative theories of dialogue (proposed by Lev Vygotsky, Jürgen Habermas, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Hubert Hermans), primarily to underscore the point that the dialogue in a community of inquiry is a relationship among persons which presupposes their identities in quantitative, not qualitative—or narrative—terms. As such, dialogue answers a question which had been on hold since my earlier discussions on personhood, mind, language, and narrative (Chapters 3, 4, and 6), namely, how to characterize the discourse needed to explain, understand, and evaluate issues of agency and moral responsibility. At this point, the key threads of the chapter so far are tied together by linking the normative ideals of reasonableness and the community of inquiry, which enables me to offer a broader perspective on the nature of schooling in a reasonable society (considering issues of ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, and intellectual diversity, and the public school/private school dichotomy). Finally, I turn to the challenge of countering unreasonableness by enacting greater reasonableness across society, given that the community of inquiry model serves as a paradigm of reasonableness within the context of formal education. The clue here is to adapt and utilize the key dimensions of this paradigm as I have identified them. I propose a modified version of the model of “Deliberative Polling” (but without the polling), which might be termed a model of “social deliberation”. I conclude by expressing the hope that such a model might open up ways to engage diverse groups and individuals in mutually respectful dialogue. Therein lies the key to enacting greater reasonableness in a troubled and divided world.
This qualitative study explored the silent but powerful voices of critical stakeholders in the development of teacher practitioners. It is an unarguable fact that an effective teacher programme hitherto student teacher cannot be produced without passing through good mentorship. In many a case, studies make reference to the mentor but little has been heard from the mentors. This study attempts to capture the experiences, beliefs, concerns and views of mentors with regard to mentoring. Thus, the study focused on 10 mentors from both urban and rural experiences in Masvingo district. These responded to semi-structured interviews. Their selection was purely purposive and convenient. The study revealed interesting results which can be utilized to enhance effective and productive student-mentorship relationship. The results pointed on both the contact of student teachers as well as on the strong synergy between the school and the college. Thus, the study recommends for a symbiotic relationship amongst and between mentee and mentor, and school and teacher training institutions as it was found out that teacher development is an all inclusive process.
This chapter reviews research linking the importance of community in an increasing engagement in online courses from an interdisciplinary perspective. Additionally, we identify applicable teaching strategies that focus on the important elements of community building, namely teaching, social, and cognitive presence.
This essay critically examines the so-called ‘unnaturalness’ of historical thinking. I identify and analyse three lines of argument frequently invoked by historians to defend the validity of historical inquiry in response to scepticism, which is often couched in postmodern terms. In doing so, I highlight that these lines of argument are predicated upon historians’ thought processes and concepts being domain general. This idea of historical thinking as part of our ordinary thinking could help us develop a history curriculum in which students are required to employ those processes and concepts to solve both everyday and historical questions. With such a curriculum, students could more easily see the relevance of history education to their daily lives.
Our study focuses on adolescents’ tacit substantive understanding and their attempt to make sense of Roman slavery. We studied forty-five Portuguese students distributed by three age groups aged 12+, 14+ and 16+ respectively. They were selected from one secondary school from the North of Portugal, in the environs of Braga. They all had studied, with different degrees of accuracy and depth, the subject of Slavery in Rome. The main purposes of this study were to map students' tacit ideas on slavery, and to detect possible links between students' tacit historical understanding and their empathetic understanding of people of the past. To attain those purposes two specific questions were formulated: What tacit substantive historical ideas do students evoke when trying to understand social practices in the past?, and What tacit substantive historical ideas constitute workable generalisations for understanding such practices? Based on the analysis of data from two interviews and a written test administered to the three age groups, we found commonalities and differences in the students' tacit historical understanding of slavery (Tacit Substantive Historical Understanding interview) and in their empathetic understanding of Roman slaves' reasons for saving their masters from death (Empathy test and Empathy interview). We also determined the students' substantive generalisations on some areas of human experience which were evoked to understand past people and practices. Based on commonalities and differences found in the three age groups, we propose a systematization that may provide some partial and provisional contributions for the study of adolescents' understanding of history.
In this article, I use data from interviews with three social studies teachers to consider teachers’ identity development. I point to how their narratives challenge traditional linear notions of professional attainment and apprenticeship by drawing on theories from Deleuze and Guattari as well as scholars in education who have utilised Deleuzian conceptions to theorise teacher education. Becoming teacher is a way for teachers and teacher educators to rethink professional identity for the fostering of justice and equity.
While social studies is often referred to as either disciplinary or interdisciplinary, we explain why the term intra-disciplinary might be more appropriate. Specifically, we present new materialist definitions of the prefix intra- and theorize why it is productive to consider social studies concepts as simultaneously historic, geographic, economic, and civic, instead of discrete and separate disciplines. After presenting an overview of the field of social studies and concerns over disciplinary definitions and designations, we show how theory can be put into practice with descriptions of three activities we did with elementary and secondary-focused preservice teachers designed with an intra-disciplinary approach in mind. These activities include a walk through a local neighborhood, a trip to a nearby organic grocery store, and a field trip to the state art museum. Ultimately, we present an argument that the often separated social studies disciplines are always abundantly present in each other and that their continued separation narrows the scope of the field and restricts teachers' ability to create relevancy between classroom topics and the lives of students.
Moral inquiry—inquiry with children and young people into the justification for subscribing to moral standards—is central to moral education and philosophical in character. The community of inquiry (CoI) method is an established and attractive approach to teaching philosophy in schools. There is, however, a problem with using the CoI method to engage pupils in moral inquiry: some moral standards should be taught directively, with the aim of bringing it about that pupils understand and accept the justification for subscribing to them; but directive moral teaching is widely thought to be impermissible in the CoI. In this article I identify, and push back against, three sources of resistance to directive teaching in the CoI literature: (i) the idea that imparting moral beliefs is indoctrinatory; (ii) the idea that questions discussed in the CoI must be open; and (iii) the idea that teachers in the CoI must be philosophically self-effacing. I argue for a more expansive understanding of the CoI method—one in which there is, after all, room for directive moral teaching.
Los estudios centrados en el diagnóstico de las formas de enseñanza de las ciencias sociales constituyen una línea de investigación relevante en el campo de la didáctica de las ciencias sociales. Su importancia radica en la necesidad de conocer cómo se enseñan disciplinas como la historia, la geografía y la historia del arte, para detectar las carencias y mejorar la formación del profesorado. Por esta razón, el objetivo principal de este trabajo es conocer cómo perciben los profesores la forma en la que enseñan la historia al alumnado. La metodología de investigación es de carácter cuantitativo con un diseño no experimental realizado, a partir de un cuestionario con escala tipo Likert. Los análisis realizados son de tipo estadístico descriptivo e inferencial. La muestra no probabilística está formada por 332 docentes que enseñan Ciencias Sociales en las etapas de Educación Primaria y de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria en España. Los resultados indican que los métodos y estrategias didácticas más centradas en el alumnado son mejor valoradas por el profesorado, así como una enseñanza que fomenta el desarrollo del pensamiento crítico en el alumnado. Se concluye que, desde la optica del profesorado, va dejandose atrás una metodología tradicional y adecuado s valoran uadaanza de la disciplina enfoques de enseñanza debido a una mejora en la formación inicial y continua del profesorado.
Background
This paper outlines the findings of a sociocultural study that examined how digital contexts shape historical thinking. It was assumed that the tools used to engage with historical information mediate thinking, and that when evaluating historical information online, participants would draw upon heuristics associated with Historical Thinking (Wineburg, 1991) and website evaluation.
Method
The study involved qualitative interviews with historians and university students who evaluated three historical websites using a think-aloud protocol followed by semi-structured questioning.
Findings
While sourcing, corroboration and contextualization remain the basis of disciplinary inquiry, the specific nature of each heuristic shifted when being used to evaluate online material, and a new category of intertextual ‘hybrid’ heuristics was formed as participants adapted general digital heuristics to evaluate historical information. Furthermore, these ‘hybrid heuristics’ had divergent effects on participants: for the students it appeared to inhibit critical historical thinking, whereas for the historians it formed the basis of their deep critical appraisal.
Contribution
The findings have implications for research on historical thinking, history education and critical website evaluation.
The historical background of this field, how it relates to change and changing, the contemporary debate in the consultancy literature and its main components as a scientific field of research.
Presents three categories of an expanded view of scholarly activity in education: (1) studying programs and school cultures to better understand and describe the impact of practice; (2) creating new frames and strategies for taking action; and (3) transforming research and practice through collaboration between schools and universities. (SLD)
In this 1989 book Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature or as realizations of suprahistorical goals. This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable on a private level, although it cannot advance the social or political goals of liberalism. In fact Rorty believes that it is literature not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine sense of human solidarity. A truly liberal culture, acutely aware of its own historical contingency, would fuse the private, individual freedom of the ironic, philosophical perspective with the public project of human solidarity as it is engendered through the insights and sensibilities of great writers. The book has a characteristically wide range of reference from philosophy through social theory to literary criticism. It confirms Rorty's status as a uniquely subtle theorist, whose writing will prove absorbing to academic and nonacademic readers alike.
Preface 1. Brains in a vat 2. A problem about reference 3. Two philosophical perspectives 4. Mind and body 5. Two conceptions of rationality 6. Fact and value 7. Reason and history 8. The impact of science on modern conceptions of rationality 9. Values, facts and cognition Appendix Index.
In the first book-length study of American philosophy at the turn of the century, Daniel J. Wilson traces the formation of philosophy as an academic discipline. Wilson shows how the rise of the natural and physical sciences at the end of the nineteenth century precipitated a "crisis of confidence" among philosophers as to the role of their discipline. Deftly tracing the ways in which philosophers sought to incorporate scientific values and methods into their outlook and to redefine philosophy itself, Wilson moves between close analysis of philosophical texts and consideration of professional careers of illustrative philosophers, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce. The author situates the emergence of professional philosophy in the context of the professionalization of American higher education and articulates, in the case of philosophy, the structures and values of a professional discipline. One of the most important consequences of this transformation was a new emphasis on communal theories of truth. Peirce, Dewey, and Royce all developed sophisticated and important theories of community as they were engaged in reshaping and redefining the limits of philosophy. This book will be of great importance for those interested in the history of philosophy, the rise of professions, and American intellectual and educational history, and to all those seeking to understand the contemporary revival of pragmatic thought and theories of community.
Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies
This work proposes a single structure to incorporate all aspects of history - events, evidence, interpretations, books and lectures, popular ideas and social effects - into one comprehensive whole. This study is grounded in the common-sense meaning of the word, "structure" It composes one paradigm encompassing the organization of history as a whole and the organization of each of its parts. Dr Stanford locates the problems of studying story, both philosophical and practical. He clarifies the issues and exemplifies the current thinking of both historians and philosophers.
This paper describes a research and development project in teaching designed to examine whether and how it might be possible to bring the practice of knowing mathematics in school closer too what it means to know mathematics within the discipline by deliberately altering the roles and responsibilities of teacher and students in classroom discourse. The project was carried out as a regular feature of lessons in fifth-grade mathematics in a public school. A case of teaching and learning about exponents derived from lessons taught in the project is described and interpreted from mathematical, pedagogical, and sociolinguistic perspectives. To change the meaning of knowing and learning in school, the teacher initiated and supported social interactions appropriate to making mathematical arguments in response to students’ conjectures. The activities students engaged in as they asserted and examined hypotheses about the mathematical structures that underlie their solutions to problems are contrasted with the conventional activities that characterize school mathematics.
In this article I explore what it means to read a historical text. In doing so, I draw on my research with historians and high school students, who thought aloud as they reviewed a set of texts about the American Revolution. I begin by providing an overview of what I learned from historians, sketching in broad strokes an image of the skilled reader of history. Next, I compare this image to what emerged from an analysis of high school students' responses to these same documents. I then speculate about the source of differences between these two groups, arguing that each group brings to these texts a distinctive epistemological stance, one that shapes and guides the meanings that are derived from text. I end by outlining the implications of this work for how we define reading comprehension and how we define the place of history in the school curriculum.
The concept of pedagogic content knowledge is by now a familiar one: Lee Shulman introduced it into the lexicon of research on teaching in order to pick out a distinctive, subject-centered feature of the knowledge base of teaching. But is teachers' knowledge of subject matter different in kind from that of scholars? This article investigates that question. First, it rejects a possible answer derived from objectivist epistemology on the grounds of its untenability. Second, it explores Dewey's account of subject matter knowledge to determine if his position justifies a division in subject matter between scholarly and pedagogic forms. The article concludes by rejecting Shulman's dualistic theory and affirming an alternative: that all knowledge is, in varying ways, pedagogic. This result points to a community of teaching and scholarship that is at odds with our institutional arrangements and practices.
A leading contributor to the "new social studies" movement tells where the action is and analyzes what it appears to consist of.
This is the first comparative study of ideas and politics in France, Germany, the US, and Great Britain between 1870 and 1920 - a period when two generations of European and American intellectuals created a transatlantic community of philosophical and political discourse. In particular, it demonstrates how a number of thinkers from different traditions converged to create the theoretical foundations for new programmes of social democracy and progressivism. 'finely researched and imaginative survey ...an interesting and important contribution to the history of political philosophy.' Journal of American History
On 13 September 1759, General James Wolfe, having led the British troops up the St Lawrence to victory in the Battle of Quebec, died on the Heights of Abraham. Schama examines this death, and how Wolfe was made to die again - through the spectacular painting by Benjamin West, and through the writings of the 19th-century historian Francis Parkman. Schama's second death concerns Parkman's uncle, George Parkman of Harvard Medical College, who disappeared in 1849 in mysterious circumstances and who was rumoured to have been murdered by a colleague. Through these incidents, Schama sheds light on the writing of history, the history of history, and the relationship of 'story' to 'history'.
"Elegant compromises" in the classroom can make divisive discussions between traditionalists and multiculturalists seem irrelevant. For 25 years, public high school students in at least 3 of Wigginton's English classes have met language arts requirements by studying their Appalachian mountain history, customs, and traditions. This article highlights Foxfire's many accomplishments. (five references) (MLH)
Examines the cooperative learning approach to elementary and secondary school history and social science instruction. Defines cooperative learning. Explains that students work in small, heterogeneous groups, in positive interdependence and are accountable both as individuals and group members. Provides details for teachers on how to get started. (SG)
Although teacher effectiveness research prescriptions predominate in today's classrooms, educational research is being influenced by the work of Piagetian cognitive psychologists and educational anthropologists like Shirley Brice Heath and cultural psychologists like Michael Cole. These experts stress the importance of personal invention and the learning community in explaining what youngsters know. (13 references) (MLH)
In this article, the authors construct an argument citing the need for a conversational community within the social studies profession. After noting the need for more research to aid in understanding the field of social education, they explore relevant attributes of a conversational community. Seeking to service, in part, the research need and apply the conversational community conception to the social studies profession, the authors develop three researchable questions related to conversational practice. In short, they asked 1) who speaks, 2) what are the topics of discourse, and 3) how is language used? The authors conclude that while a conversational community does exist, certain practices inhibit its full potential.
Metadiscourse is the author's intrusion into the discourse, either explicitly or nonexplicitly, to direct rather than inform the readers. Nine social studies texts written for students in grades 5-12 and nine for adults no longer in school were evaluated to determine if they contain informational and attitudinal subtypes of metadiscourse. (RM)
We have written this book with an eye and ear toward a variety of audiences, ranging from practitioners and professionals to researchers like ourselves. The vantage point from which we have approached the material is that of the experimental social psychologist who wants to formulate theory and research in ways that have practical applications. Students and professionals in other areas, however, will find the content of this book interesting and germane. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
