Course Description In this course, we will explore the question of the actual and potential connections between democracy and education. Our focus of attention will be placed on a critical examination of democratic theory and its implications for the civic education roles and contributions of teachers, adult educators, community development practitioners, and community organizers. We will survey and deal critically with a range of competing conceptions of democracy, variously described as classical, republican, liberal, radical, marxist, neomarxist, pragmatist, feminist, populist, pluralist, postmodern, and/or participatory. Using narrative inquiry as a means for illuminating and interpreting contemporary practice, we will analyze the implications of different conceptions of democracy for the practical work of civic education.

Democracy and education.

Teacher professional development is essential to efforts to improve our schools. This article maps the terrain of research on this important topic. It first provides an overview of what we have learned as a field, about effective professional development programs and their impact on teacher learning. It then suggests some important directions and strategies for extending our knowledge into new territory of questions not yet explored.

Professional Development and Teacher Learning: Mapping the Terrain

The education and research communities are abuzz with new (or at least re-discovered) ideas about the nature of cognition and learning. Terms like \"situated cognition,\" \"distributed cognition,\" and \"communities of practice\" fill the air. Recent dialogue in Educational Researcher (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996,1997; Greeno, 1997) typifies this discussion. Some have argued that the shifts in world view that these discussions represent are even more fundamental than the now-historical shift from behaviorist to cognitive views of learning (Shuell, 1986). These new ideas about the nature of knowledge, thinking, and learning—which are becoming known as the \"situative perspective\" (Greeno, 1997; Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996)—are interacting with, and sometimes fueling, current reform movements in education. Most discussions of these ideas and their implications for educational practice have been cast primarily in terms of students. Scholars and policymakers have considered, for example, how to help students develop deep understandings of subject matter, situate students' learning in meaningful contexts, and create learning communities in which teachers and students engage in rich discourse about important ideas (e.g., National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989; National Education Goals Panel, 1991; National Research Council, 1993).

What Do New Views of Knowledge and Thinking Have to Say About Research on Teacher Learning

Note on Translation Introduction by Michael Holquist Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel) The Problem of Speech Genres The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis From Notes Made in 1970-71 Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences Index

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

Two lines of thinking are becoming increasingly important in higher educational practice. The first derives from constructivist learning theory, and the second from the instructional design literature. Constructivism comprises a family of theories but all have in common the centrality of the learner's activities in creating meaning. These and related ideas have important implications for teaching and assessment. Instructional designers for their part have emphasised alignment between the objectives of a course or unit and the targets for assessing student performance. “Constructive alignment” represents a marriage of the two thrusts, constructivism being used as a framework to guide decision-making at all stages in instructional design: in deriving curriculum objectives in terms of performances that represent a suitably high cognitive level, in deciding teaching/learning activities judged to elicit those performances, and to assess and summatively report student performance. The “performances of understanding” nominated in the objectives are thus used to systematically align the teaching methods and the assessment. The process is illustrated with reference to a professional development unit in educational psychology for teachers, but the model may be generalized to most units or programs in higher education.

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Enhancing Teaching through Constructive Alignment.

The view that knowledge cannot be transmitted but must be constructed by the mental activity of learners underpins contemporary perspectives on science education. This article, which presents a theoretical perspective on teaching and learning science in the social setting of classrooms, is informed by a view of scientific knowledge as socially constructed and by a perspective on the learning of science as knowledge construction involving both individual and social processes. First, we present an overview of the nature of scientific knowledge. We then describe two major traditions in explaining the process of learning science: personal and social constructivism. Finally, we illustrate how both personal and social perspectives on learning, as well as perspectives on the nature of the scientific knowledge to be learned, are necessary in interpreting science learning in formal settings.

Constructing Scientific Knowledge in the Classroom

Foreword by James V. Wertsch Doing and talking school science Teaching science, learning science Capturing and characterising the talk of school science From everyday to scientific ideas a teaching and learning performance Struggling to come to terms with the scientific story Looking back...looking forward Appendix Bibliography Index.

Meaning Making in Secondary Science Classrooms

In this paper, we draw upon a framework for analyzing the discursive interactions of science classrooms (Mortimer & Scott, 2003, Meaning Making in Secondary Science Classrooms, Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press), to probe the movement between authoritative and dialogic discourse in a Brazilian high school science class. More specifically, we argue the point that such shifts between communicative approaches are an inevitable part of teaching whose purpose is to support meaningful learning of scientific knowledge. We suggest that a necessary tension therefore exists between authoritative and dialogic approaches as dialogic exchanges are followed by authoritative interventions (to develop the canonical scientific view), and the authoritative introduction of new ideas is followed by the opportunity for dialogic application and exploration of those ideas. In these ways, one communicative approach follows from the other, authoritativeness acting as a seed for dialogicity and vice versa. We discuss how this analysis, in terms of shifts in communicative approach, offers a new and complementary perspective on supporting “productive disciplinary engagement” (Engle & Conant, 2002, Cognition and Instruction, 20, 399–484) in the classroom. Finally we consider some methodological issues arising from this study. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed90:605–631, 2006

The tension between authoritative and dialogic discourse: A fundamental characteristic of meaning making interactions in high school science lessons

In this paper I draw an overview of a new model to analyse conceptual evolution in the classroom, based on the notion of Conceptual Profile. This model differs from conceptual change models in suggesting that it is possible to use different ways of thinking in different domains and that a new concept does not necessarily replace previous and alternative ideas. According to this model, learning science is to change a conceptual profile and become conscious of the different zones of the profile, which includes commonsense and scientific ideas.

Conceptual Change or Conceptual Profile Change

Desde a decada de sessenta, curriculos de ensino de ciencias com enfase em CTS – ciencia, tecnologia e sociedade – vem sendo desenvolvidos no mundo inteiro. Tais curriculos apresentam como objetivo central preparar os alunos para o exercicio da cidadania e caracterizam-se por uma abordagem dos conteudos cientificos no seu contexto social. No presente artigo, discutimos criticamente os pressupostos desses curriculos, de modo a fornecer subsidios para a elaboracao de novos modelos curriculares na area de Ciencias da Natureza e suas Tecnologias os quais possam contemplar a finalidade da educacao basica em preparar o aluno para o exercicio consciente da cidadania.

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Eduardo Fleury Mortimer

Papers

Constructing Scientific Knowledge in the Classroom

Meaning Making in Secondary Science Classrooms

The tension between authoritative and dialogic discourse: A fundamental characteristic of meaning making interactions in high school science lessons

Conceptual Change or Conceptual Profile Change

Uma análise de pressupostos teóricos da abordagem C-T-S (Ciência - Tecnologia - Sociedade) no contexto da educação brasileira