Showing papers on "Social practice published in 2000"

Establishing the norms of scientific argumentation in classrooms

Abstract: Basing its arguments in current perspectives on the nature of the scientific enterprise, which see argument and argumentative practice as a core activity of scientists, this article develops the case for the inclusion and central role of argument in science education. Beginning with a review of the nature of argument, it discusses the function and purpose of dialogic argument in the social construction of scientific knowledge and the interpretation of empirical data. The case is then advanced that any education about science, rather than education in science, must give the role of argument a high priority if it is to give a fair account of the social practice of science, and develop a knowledge and understanding of the evaluative criteria used to establish scientific theories. Such knowledge is essential to enhance the public understanding of science and improve scientific literacy. The existing literature, and work that has attempted to use argument within science education, is reviewed to show that classroom practice does provide the opportunity to develop young people's ability to construct argument. Furthermore, the case is advanced that the lack of opportunities for the practice of argument within science classrooms, and lack of teacher's pedagogical skills in organizing argumentative discourse within the classroom are significant impediments to progress in the field. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed84:287–312, 2000.

Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High

Abstract: List of Figures. List of Tables. Preface. Introduction: Variation and Agency. Interpreting the Meaning of Variation. The Social Order of Belten High. Sociolinguistic Research in the School. The Vocalic Variables. Outline of Variation in Belten High. We Are What We Do. Friendships, Networks, and Communities of Practice. Style, Social Meaning, and Sound Change. References. Index.

Vygotskian Perspectives on Literacy Research: Constructing Meaning through Collaborative Inquiry

Abstract: 1. Introduction: constructing meaning through collaborative inquiry Carol D. Lee and Peter Smagorinsky Part I. Paradoxes in Vygotsky's Account of Development: 2. Vygotsky's two minds on the nature of meaning James V. Wertsch 3. Creativity and collaboration in knowledge construction Vera John-Steiner and Teresa Meehan Part II. Studies of Collaborative Inquiry: 4. Dialogic inquiry in education: building on the legacy of Vygotsky Gordon Wells 5. Consequential progressions: exploring collective-individual development in a bilingual classroom LeAnn Putney, Judith Green, Carol Dixon, Richard Duran, Ana Floriani and Beth Yeager 6. Linking writing and community development through the children's forum Anne Haas Dyson 7. Synchronic and diachronic dimensions of social practice: an emerging methodology for cultural-historical perspectives on literacy learning Kris Gutierrez and Lynda Stone 8. Idiocultural diversity in small groups: the role of the relational framework in collaborative learning Peter Smagorinsky and Cindy O'Donnell-Allen 9. Signifying in the zone of proximal development: literate cultural competencies in language minority classrooms Carol D. Lee 10. Teachers' developing philosophies on literacy and its use in public schools: a Vygotskian perspective on internal activity and teacher change Arnetha F. Ball 11. Inspired by Vygotsky: ethnographic experiments in education Luis C. Moll Author index Subject index.

Strategic Decision Mking, Discourse, And Strategy As Social Practice

Abstract: In this paper we argue that the existing conceptualizations of strategic decision making, while each affording valuable insights, offer only partial and disconnected perspectives of the strategy process that leave important questions un-addressed. To overcome this problem we develop an empirically grounded conceptualization of strategic decisions as elements of a strategic discourse, operating at both the structural level of social reproduction and the instrumental level of intentional communication, and constituting the medium through which choices are discussed and recorded, interpretations developed and expressed, and strategic actions initiated, authorized and acknowledged. This conceptualization opens up a number of research questions concerning the role of strategic decision making in the overall strategy process and leads to a fruitful conceptualization of strategy itself as a technological and appropriative social practice.

Student Writing in Higher Education: New Contexts.

Abstract: Student Writing in Higher Education is the first book to examine student writing in the context of major changes taking place in today's higher education For example, students now come to higher education from an increasingly wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, to study in a number of diverse learning environments Their courses often no longer reflect traditional academic subject boundaries, with their attendant values and norms There is also an increasing recognition of the importance of lifelong learning, and the necessity for universities to adapt their provision to make it possible for learners to enter and return to higher education at different points in their livesAgainst the background of these changes, this book brings together research carried out by practitioners in a number of international university contexts Each of the chapters focuses on some aspect of 'new contexts' - either by examining the writing and assessment practices of non-traditional university courses and settings, or by exploring attempts to introduce innovative practices in traditional academic subjects The authors concentrate specifically on the implications of research for the work of university teachers The unifying theme of the volume is a view of writing as a contextualized social practice rather than merely a technical and transferable skillThis book is an important resource for all university teachers seeking to improve their teaching with regard to student writing, and is essential reading for all staff developers

Critical literacy finds a "Place": Writing and social action in a low-income Australian grade 2/3 classroom

Abstract: In a study of socioeconomically disadvantaged children's acquisition of school literacies, a university research team investigated how a group of teachers negotiated critical literacies and explored notions of social power with elementary children in a suburban school located in an area of high poverty. Here we focus on a grade 2/3 classroom where the teacher and children became involved in a local urban renewal project and on how in the process the children wrote about place and power. Using the students' concerns about their neighborhood, the teacher engaged her class in a critical literacy project that not only involved a complex set of literate practices but also taught the children about power and the possibilities for local civic action. In particular, we discuss examples of children's drawing and writing about their neighborhoods and their lives. We explore how children's writing and drawing might be key elements in developing "critical literacies" in elementary school settings. We consider how such classroom writing can be a mediator of emotions, intellectual and academic learning, social practice, and political activism.

Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art

Abstract: As early as the sixteenth century, drawing in England came to be seen as something more than an activity exclusive to artists; it became a polite and useful art, a practice of everyday life. This generously illustrated book explores the social and cultural processes that enabled drawing to emerge as an amateur pastime, as well as the meanings that drawing had for people who were not artists. Ann Bermingham shows how the history of drawing in England, from the age of Elizabeth I to the era of early photography, mirrored changes in society, politics, the practical world, and notions of self. The book examines how drawing intersected with a wide range of social phenomena, from political absolutism, writing, empirical science, and Enlightenment pedagogy to nationalism, industrialism, tourism, bourgeois gentility, and religious instruction. Bermingham discusses the central role of drawing and the visual arts in Renaissance debates about government and self-government, then considers the relations between seventeenth-century drawing, natural science, and the masculine ideal of the honest gentleman. She also investigates landscape drawing in the context of eighteenth-century views on sensibility; the emergence of the amateur draftsman and the accomplished woman; and the commercialisation of amateur drawing in the nineteenth century. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact of photography on the social practice of drawing.

Assessment : social practice and social product

Abstract: 1. Changing the Discourse of Assessment Policy: The Case of English Primary Education 2.Choosing Not to Know: How Assessment Policies and Practices Obscure the Education of Language Minority Students in US Schools 3.Testing and the Construction of Intelligence 4.The Intersection of Technical and Social Considerations in High-Stakes Testing 5.Mathematics Testing and Children's Socio-Cultural Backgrounds: Comparisons of Problems of Realistic Test Items Among Primary and Secondary School Children 6.Assessing Young Children: The Three Bears Problem of the Familiar Story as Cultural Resource 7.Dimensions and Dynamics of Parental Strategies: Longitudinal Case Studies of Primary School Assessment 8.Making the Graduate: Perspectives on Assessment in Higher Education 9.Assessment and Postmodernism 10.Assessment, Power and Cultural Difference

Research as Social Practice A Case Study of Research on Technical and Professional Communication

Abstract: Most discussions of qualitative research organize research methodologies according to their place in a set of research paradigms identified by epistemological and ontological commitments. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu, the authors argue for a theory of research as social practice in which researchers' purposes are determined not by philosophical paradigms but by their commitments to specific forms of social action. The authors offer a model of research practices organized according to their relationship to social power rather than abstract paradigms. From this perspective, the dilemmas presented by recent postmodern critiques of representation, the inclusion and co-optation of participants' voices, and validity become a question of ethics. The authors explore the problems of postmodern ethics and qualitative research through the work of Bauman.

School field trips and the curriculum of public spaces

Abstract: Drawing on material from an ethnographic study, I examine transformations in the nature of public spaces for children, and the school's role in producing those spaces. Space is treated as a product of social practice, not simply a frame for it. I contend that, as young children are increasingly immobilized in urban landscapes, school field trips become critical occasions for introducing them to, and framing their participation in, public spaces. I focus primarily on a field trip to an art museum in a redeveloped downtown, and then look briefly at a different type of trip, illustrated by a visit to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

New times, new millennium, new literacies

Abstract: This paper conceptualizes literacy as a social practice consisting of multiliteracies, and reviews the research of students’ various uses of these literacies in school. Framed within d/Discourse theories proposed by Foucault and Gee, students’ multiple school literacy practices are categorized by processes of indoctrination into academic literacies, negotiation of home/community and academic literacies, and navigation of multiliteracies. From the studies examined, implications are drawn for teacher education practices in the new millennium. Recommendations address diversity in school d/ Discourses, identities, and literacy practices specific to students’ multiliteracies and to their ever changing and growing literacy needs.

The Significance of Earth-Eating: Social and Cultural Aspects of Geophagy Among Luo Children

Abstract: Earth‐eating is common among primary school children in Luoland, western Kenya. This article describes the social significance and meanings attributed to it. Earth‐eating is practised among children before puberty, irrespective of their sex, and among women of reproductive age, but not usually among adult men or old women. To eat earth signifies belonging to the female sphere within the household, which includes children up to adolescence. Through eating earth, or abandoning it, the children express their emerging gender identity. Discourses about earth‐eating, describing the practice as unhealthy and bad, draw on ‘modern’ notions of hygiene, which are imparted, for example, in school. They form part of the discursive strategies with which men especially maintain a dominant position in the community. Beyond the significance of earth‐eating in relation to age, gender and power, it relates to several larger cultural themes, namely fertility, belonging to a place, and the continuity of the lineage. Earth symbolises female, life‐bringing forces. Termite hills, earth from which is eaten by most of the children and women, can symbolise fertility, and represent the house and the home, and the graves of ancestors. Earth‐eating is a form of ‘communion’ with life‐giving forces and with the people with whom one shares land and origin. Earth‐eating is a social practice produced in complex interactions of body, mind and other people, through which children incorporate and embody social relations and cultural values.

Technological Affordance, Social Practice and Learning Narratives in an Early Childhood Setting

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between the affordance of the materials and the tools in one activity in an early childhood educational setting and the learning of the group of participating four-year-olds. The affordances are analysed as transparency, challenge and accessibility. The children's learning is analysed as emerging learning narratives that comprise intent, response to difficulty, and patterns of responsibility. Two major themes emerged from the investigation. The first is that historically- and socioculturally-determined social practice played a central role in the affordance of the activity. The second is that the relationship was a transactional process in which, through mediated action, the learners edited, selected from, and altered the educational setting, while at the same time the activity changed the learners. The research findings are set within the literature on affordance, learning narratives and social practice, with particular but not exclusive reference to early childhood settings.

Teaching as a Social Practice: Implications for Faculty Development.

Abstract: What we believe about the nature of teaching has important implications for faculty development. In this article we contrast three different beliefs about the nature of teaching and highlight the implications for faculty development. If teaching were merely a technical enterprise where well trained teachers delivered packaged lessons, a very directive style of faculty development might be appropriate. If teaching were primarily a craft where teachers made personal judgments daily about how and what to teach, then faculty development which encouraged individual reflection and artistry might be more suitable. This article advances the argument that teaching generally (and teaching in medical schools in particular) is best characterized as a type of social practice. Social practices (such as parenting, being polite, and going to university) are purposive, rational, moral, communal, and are identified by their activities. The communal aspect of teaching means, among other things, that the prevailing social norms of faculty at particular institutions of higher education have a large role to play in shaping the practice of teaching. This being the case, faculty development needs to provide teachers the opportunity to address and reshape these powerful social norms where necessary.

Reclaiming Social Capital Through Critical Teaching

Abstract: In this article I argue that contemporary society is increasingly experiencing a dramatic loss of social connectedness or "social capital." This takes expression in schools in the increasing tendency, especially as reflected in school reforms and restructuring, of regarding teachers' work in technical terms. I argue that the way of turning this wider loss of social capital around is to regard teaching as a social practice in which there is greater emphasis on teaching for social responsibility, democracy, social justice, and civility. I give examples of how this might be possible through a critical approach to teaching.

Ecology in mind, mindful practices

Abstract: In many areas of writing and social practice it has become commonplace to think of people and organizations as having content-specific characteristics (e.g., traits, attitudes, structures), and as conducting internal and external processes (intra and interpersonal, intra- and inter-organizational...). The approach taken here is very different. Relational processes form the “starting point”, these being viewed as the medium within which social realities and learning are socially constructed. More precisely, relational processes are said to construct (1) people and things and (2) relations-as social realities. It is suggested that relations very often are constructed as being between separate and opposed entities; these being viewed as relations of “either/or”. However, relations also may be constructed as “both/and”, which invites a view of learning as participation by treating self and other as joined. It is this participative or ecological view that is explored here. An ecological view invites serious co...

The Social Practice of Self-Defense Martial Arts: Applications for Physical Education

Abstract: The practice of the self-defense martial arts has much to offer physical education. In this paper we draw on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory of the Logic of Practice to present a case that when viewed as a social practice, these movement forms generate certain, specific, practically oriented schemes of dispositions or habitus in the practitioner. We then consider the potential value of using matia1 arts practice in physical education for their ability to offer a glimpse at genuinely alternative ways of relating to oneself and the world through the physical mediunm that would help to compliment and offset the overriding domninance of dualist understandings of the mind /body nexus that currently exists in Western physical education.

Training for a Smart Workforce

Abstract: Part 1 Megatrends - setting the scene in the changing world of work: changes in work and social life at the dawn of the 21st Century, Allan Levett. Part 2 Critcal aspects for workplace education: competence - the basic for a smart workforce, Jorgen Sandberg experience, common sense and expertise in workplace learning, Rod Gerber getting smart around literacy - social practice, workplaces and the workforce in new times, Colin Lankshear. Part 3 Pedagogical implications: peformance at work - identifying smart work practice, Stephen Billet workers' texts, identities and learning possibilities in the smart workforce, Peter O'Connor transfer of learning to strengthen workplace training, Rod Gerber and Charles Oaklief. Part 4 Directions: lifelong and life-broad learning, Staffan Larson.

Machine Agency as Perceived Autonomy: An Action Perspective

Abstract: Recent theoretical debates in the literature have taken up the themes of social and technological determinism in the context of actor network theory and structuration theory. This paper explores (computerized) machine agency from an action-based perspective. How is it that information technologies affect our actions, how can we marshal this property, and what can we do about the results if we don’t like them? In order to gain some purchase on these questions, we distinguish between two styles of analysis and between two social systems or networks. Cross-sectional analysis is distinguished from longitudinal analysis. The use system, which enmeshes social practice and IT in our everyday activities is distinguished from the development system, which is responsible for putting the IT in place, maintaining, and updating them. In the majority of workday situations, cross-sectional analysis of the use system leads to the appearance of material agency. However, longitudinal analysis of the development system tends to locate agency in the design decisions of the developers. These analytical distinctions lead to a new conceptualization of machine agency as perceived autonomy from the development system. Unlike previous accounts, this view is consistent with both structuration theory and actor network theory. This allows continued access to these powerful analytical vehicles and enables the strong analysis that is the precursor to effective action.

Moral Responsibility and Respect for Autonomy: Meeting the Communitarian Challenge

Abstract: The principle of respect for autonomy has come under increasing attack both within health care ethics, specifically, and as part of the more general communitarian challenge to predominantly liberal values. This paper will demonstrate the importance of respect for autonomy for the social practice of assigning moral responsibility and for the development of moral responsibility as a virtue. Guided by this virtue, the responsible exercise of autonomy may provide a much-needed connection between the individual and the community.

'Engineers of the Human Machine': The Social Practice of Council Housing Management in Glasgow, 1895-1939:

Abstract: In a 1997 paper in Urban Studies, Clapham argued that Housing Studies could benefit from an injection of social constructionist research, as previous housing research had been driven by policy-makers. This paper rebuts this argument, demonstrating that such research has been carried out by sociologists of housing in Britain for some 30 years. The paper continues with a detailed example of such research, offering a case study of the housing management of the interwar (1924) Glasgow housing scheme of Hamiltonhill. Marrying constructionist and materialist theoretical perspectives, and drawing upon a wealth of empirical data, the paper demonstrates that the social practice of council housing management in interwar Glasgow was blatantly aimed at the social control of public-sector tenants, and that this social control was firmly located in contemporary class relationships and class ideology. The paper concludes that such a perspective has considerable potential for the analysis of current housing management pr...

Marriage on trial : Islamic family law in Iran and Morocco

Abstract: Part 1 The Shar'ia, law and social practice - strategies of accommodation: the setting - courts, marital disputes and marriage legal anatomy of divorce - the Iranian case legal anatomy of divorce - the Moroccan case social anatomy of divorce - the law and the practice. Part 2 Areas of tension between law and practice - strategies of selection: filiation and custody in law and practice validating marriage and divorce conclusion.

Cyber Pedagogy as Critical Social Practice in a Teacher Education Program

Abstract: The policies and practices of higher education are reeling under the social, economic, and technological changes currently taking place in post-industrial, information societies. New communications and information technologies are constitutive factors in the philosophical and pedagogical shifts that are occurring in university classrooms. This paper uses a case-study methodology to investigate the use made of online technologies in one preservice teacher education context. Cyber technologies and their associated pedagogical activities are conceptualized in the paper not only as tools, but also as social practices. This approach enables a focus on learning and teaching as transformative practices. Following a description of the course content and delivery, the paper turns to an analysis of four key pedagogical features of cyber pedagogy as generated by the data. These are: Teaching and Learning as Self-directed Activity, Change in Student Identities and Self-perceptions, New forms of Technoliteracies, and ...

Family work trends and practices : 1971 to 1991

Abstract: Families are allocating their time in an increasingly market-oriented fashion, with a decreasing proportion of labor hours being devoted to unpaid work. This article analyzes two aspects of the changing allocation of time. First, using longitudinal data from 1971 to 1991, the nature of the changes in how the families have changed their allocation of time between market and non-market alternatives is examined. Next, how family types have changed their allocations over the same period are examined. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics is used for this analysis.

No One's Land: Australia and the Philosophical Imagination

Abstract: Drawing on the work of Michele Le Doeuff, this paper uses the idea of "philosophical imagination" to make visible the historical intersection between philosophical ideas, social practice, and institutional structures. It explores the role of ideas of "terra nullius" and of the "doomed race" in the formation of some crucial ways in which non-indigenous Australians have imagined their relations with indigenous peoples. The author shows how feminist reading strategies that attend to the imaginary open up ways of rethinking processes of inclusion and exclusion. Feminist philosophy, not surprisingly, has been centrally concerned with issues of gender and sexual difference. Perhaps it is now time to stand back from that familiar content in order to get a clearer idea of what might have emerged as distinctive about the practice of feminist philosophy, and to ask whether that practice might appropriately be broadened to take account of other pressing issues of contemporary societies. This paper traces just one route through this terrain by reflecting on what feminists have made of the exercise of rereading texts from the history of philosophy from a standpoint of concern with contemporary issues. It is a route that passes from gender to race as a fundamental issue of concern. In that respect, this paper expresses the preoccupations of contemporary Australian politics. But I think broadly similar, though no doubt in detail very different, transitions can be traced in other countries where feminists have attempted to challenge and re-construct the agenda of mainstream philosophy. My discussion will center on the idea of the "philosophical imagination" as a form of response to the present, a response that is both philosophical and political. This emerging philosophical practice has, for contingent reasons, had close connections with the development of feminist philosophy. But it is

Information Technology as Cultural Capital: Shifting the Boundaries of Power

Abstract: Most researchers writing about the uses and applications of information technologies in schools adopt an ’objective,‘ asocial perspective that represents the activities taking place as neutral, technical events or procedures. This paper uses the critical sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu to frame up a case study of the role played by a secondary student in an extensive upgrade to the computer network of the school at which he was a student. The application of social theory enables the reconceptualisation of technology as a material, social practice in the institutional site of the school. The implication is that pedagogical actions and relations are then open to analysis and modification. The paper proposes that, with appropriate support and guidance, it is feasible for students with technical ’cultural capital‘ to move from the margins to the centre of technological innovation and educational change.

Orthography and ideology: issues in Sranan spelling.

Abstract: This paper concerns the orthography of Sranan, an English-lexicon creole spoken by a majority of the population in Surinam (South America), which also has many speakers in the Netherlands. Sranan has a long written tradition and has had two official orthographies, but it is still often written informally using conventions largely derived from Dutch. Social and ideological issues always accompany the development of an orthography but are often viewed as lying outside the realm of linguistics. In this paper I survey the orthographic practices, past and present, used in writing Sranan, to argue that orthographies are shaped less by the phonological facts of the language concerned than by social and cultural factors in the context where the orthography is used. The most important of these are the nature of bilingualism among the literate part of the population while the orthography is developing; literacy practices within the community as a whole; and ideological beliefs concerning languages and their speakers, both inside and outside the speech community. I argue for the view that orthography is a social practice embedded in the social and cultural practices of the writers and speakers of the language.