Using Fan Fiction to Bridge Students' Understanding of Science

The purpose of this chapter was to present current literature focused on integrating science and literacy and describe the teaching of a science unit of study that incorporated fanfiction literature in a fourth-grade classroom. Ms. Bardon's instructional techniques were focused on integrating science learning with reading and writing based within a fictional text read together as a classroom community throughout the unit of science study. The unit of study was presented alongside background literature to illustrate how such teaching is indicative of a larger movement in the educational field toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-based pedagogy and curriculum. The account of teaching was presented according to the close reading of the fictional text, the hands-on science activities, and the culminating student writing of a fanfiction narrative that constituted the assessment of science learning.

Situating LIS pedagogy and curriculum in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and anti-racism: a reflection on process

PurposeA working group of Masters in Management of Library and Information Science (MMLIS) Librarian Faculty was formed to address diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and anti-racism (DEIA + AR) specifically in pedagogy and curriculum, resulting in actionable items and recommendations that will ensure the program is promoting diversity, equity, inclusive, accessable and anti-racist strategies, curriculum, resources and pedagogical practices in our classrooms.Design/methodology/approachThe Working Groups charge was designed to begin the work of dismantling the inequitable power structures which will lead to more equitable opportunities and access for marginalized groups that will become leaders in information sciences in the future.FindingsThe efforts of the DEIA + AR Working Group resulted in several supplemental documents in addition to the formal recommendations including curricular and pedagogical best practices, a terminology document (establishing a shared language), a commitment document, recommendations, and a resource repository.Practical implicationsA working group of MMLIS Librarian Faculty was formed to address DEIA + AR specifically in the program's pedagogy and curriculum, resulting in actionable items and recommendations that will ensure the program is promoting anti-racist strategies, curriculum, resources and pedagogical practices in our classrooms.Social implicationsThis process study has value and impact for academics from any discipline to learn about one University's MMLIS program prioritizing DEIA + AR in program development, curriculum and pedagogical practices.Originality/valueThe converging events of the international pandemic and the national crisis of inequity in the United States in 2020 prompted a renewed commitment by the MMLIS program at the University of Southern California (USC) to revisit the program's DEIA policies and procedures and add anti-racism constructs into the curriculum.

Blurring the play–drama boundary: A case study investigating the teaching and learning of a drama-integrated curriculum in a Hong Kong kindergarten

This study aims to conceptualise a drama-integrated curriculum devised from process drama as an approach to play-based pedagogy and curriculum to realise the policy initiative of learning through play. By investigating teachers’ perspectives and practices in relation to the curriculum of a local kindergarten, examples of effective drama-integration strategies and the associated children's learning are identified and organised into four themes – namely, drama teaching and learning through, before, in and after play. The teachers understood that although their curriculum is not based on free play, its not-so-free features may reconcile the play–learning binarism, daring them to navigate the maze of complex relationships between play, drama, teaching and learning in implementing a playful curriculum.

Mixed Method Evaluation of a Graduate Student Teaching and Learning Internship Program

In recognition of the need to better prepare doctoral candidates with teaching and learning competencies, we devised an innovative internship program in the form of a structured apprenticeship and trialed it in public health higher education. The paid internship was comprised of: (i) Mentoring from an experienced educator, (ii) Structured program of education in pedagogy and curriculum design, and (iii) Opportunities for applied experience. Eleven interns completed the apprenticeship in its first 2 years. The mixed method evaluation assessed the impact of the internship on knowledge, skills, and confidence of interns throughout the internship, and included a cost-consequence analysis. Data collection included surveys and face-to-face interviews with interns and mentors. Changes in intern knowledge and skills were analyzed by intern self-ratings pre- and post-internship on 11 performance descriptors. All interns indicated improvement in at least one area of teaching. Interviews indicated general satisfaction, however raised incompatibilities between the unstructured nature of mentoring and intern expectations and preferences. The economic analysis calculated a cost-offset associated with intern-delivered teaching activities of $58,820 (AUD, 2019). The total cost of the program was calculated to be $70,561 (comprising mentor investment AUD$20,436, intern investment AUD$15,126, scholarship “top-up” payment of $5,000 paid to each of the 7 interns AUD $35,000). This Internship is associated with positive impacts for interns across a range of domains at a net total investment of $11,741.

Politics of Identity and Power Distribution in Practice, Pedagogy, and Curriculum: Personal Reflections of Teacher Supervisors in Morocco

An educational system that aspires to be effective would constantly strive to bring about positive change into the society and the students it is meant to serve. Attending school would amount to a waste of time unless the experience manages to make a difference in the students’ lives regarding how they view themselves and the others around them.After all, education is not about stuffing students with knowledge; it is mostly about inspiring and empowering young learnerswith the knowledge that being different-with regards to gender, skin colour or social class - does not necessarily amount to being inferior. The aim of this reflective report is threefold. First, it tries to identify the relationship between knowledge and power.It will also elaborate on the concept of identity as a socio-cultural construct with deep implications for classroom practices,before closing with an investigation into how students and teachers' complex and diverse identities interact and shape the knowledge and power constructed in classroom practices, pedagogy, and curriculum. As implications, the paper concludes with the idea that there are yet a number of teacing and learning aspects to be explored before the classroom becomes a space where various identities are equally valued and recognized instead of a space where a sense of unequal distributon of power (and steriotypes unfairly associated with some identities) is maintained and perpetuated .

Teaching ESL Listening Skills in Ghanaian Senior High Schools: A Study of Agona West Municipality

Listening skill is one of the four important language competencies. However, it has not received the needed scholarly attention, not only in classroom pedagogy and curriculum planning but also in studies and researches in Applied Linguistics and Teaching English as Second Language. This study therefore attempts an investigation into the teaching and learning of listening skills in the language classroom in Ghana. It focuses on three issues in English as Second Language (ESL) listening comprehension; i) the strategies/methods for teaching listening skills, ii) the challenges for learning listening skills and iii) the ways to overcome the challenges. This descriptive qualitative study, having used two major instruments for data collection; observation and open-ended questionnaire, engaged 200 students and 7 teachers as the sample from selected Senior High Schools in the Agona West Municipality. The analysis of data revealed that indeed clarity of speaker, speed of delivery, learning environments, etc posed challenges to the teaching and learning of listening skills. It was also revealed that combining listening with other skills, predictive and summative strategies were the strategies teachers employed in teaching listening. Then, finally, the solutions to listening comprehension challenges, as revealed in the data, were indicated as including planning, overt student participation, clarity of speaker, assessment strategies, etc.

Between Perennialism and Progessivism: A Reflection on a Pedagogical Choice for Effective Child Development

With the task of the philosopher of education beset with several challenges and theoretical underpinnings regarding what kind of pedagogy and curriculum suits the moral and personal development of the child, various approaches have been postulated. In the present study, we prune these theories to perennialism and progressivism. There have been divergent views as to whether or not either or both of these serve the interest of the child better. What then is Perennialism? What is Progressivism? What makes each of these theories a preferred pedagogic theory for the child? Are there any places of connection and/or discord between these theories? Are they both necessarily at logger heads? In this essay, we argue that progressivism and perennialism portray shades of truth about child teaching and development that is unique and distinct to each. As human societies and social consciousness are not univocal, it is the submission of this essay that it is the task of the educator to align any of the two education theories with the yearning of the community which is where the input of education of the child is made manifest. Main persons for philosophical investigation of perennialism for us are Robert Maynard Hutchins, Mortimer J. Adler, and Sir Richard Livingstone whereas important persons for progressivism are John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and especially John Dewey. Perennialism holds the view that teachers should teach issues that are of general importance to man and focus on them. Progressivists believe that education cannot be always the same and it is always in the process of development: it must be life itself, and learning has be linked to the interests of the child, which must be carried out by solving specific social and educational problems.

On critical thinking and content knowledge: a critique of the assumptions of cognitive load theory

How critical thinking is understood has a logical impact on pedagogy and curriculum design in a critical thinking education. If critical thinking is seen as a complex mix of knowledge, skills and dispositions that can be articulated and made an object of study in themselves, then there is scope for intentional and explicit targeting of such things. If, however, critical thinking is seen as a general skill more or less impermeable to pedagogical influence and best realised through the development of content knowledge, then an explicit focus on developing thinking skills is misplaced and potentially distracting. The latter view is that of cognitive load theory (CLT), a theoretical framing of thinking and learning that has gained traction in education including with practitioners. This paper will explore some of the assumptions of CLT and show that they are either (1) in error, (2) vaguely or confusingly expressed and/or (3) irrelevant to the conclusions drawn within the theory which are often themselves errors of inference. Moreover, I point out that important educational research that weakens the claims of CLT is often not engaged with or addressed.