This paper continues a conversation about Wittgenstein’s picture of language and meaning and its ... more This paper continues a conversation about Wittgenstein’s picture of language and meaning and its potential applications for educational theorising. It takes the form of a response to Wolff-Michael Roth’s earlier paper “Heeding Wittgenstein on “understanding” and “meaning”: A pragmatist and concrete human psychological approach in/for education,” in which Roth problematizes the use of the terms “understanding” and “meaning” in education discourse and proposes their abandonment. Whilst we agree with Roth about a series of central points, at the same time we maintain that he has taken his argument in directions antithetical to our reading of Wittgenstein’s work. We offer four points of departure, exploring themes of: (i) appropriate questioning; (ii) eliminativism; (iii) language-games and grammar; and (iv) productivity, explanation, and a science of learning. We conclude by discussing ways consistent with Wittgenstein’s thought to go on in thinking about education.
If science education is so complex, then how should we sense it, know it, feel it and perform it?... more If science education is so complex, then how should we sense it, know it, feel it and perform it? If we are to escape our Cartesian blinkers, we need to teach ourselves new ways of thinking, of feeling, of sensing and relating in science education. Drawing on affect theory and personal experiences, this chapter offers a series of reflections on the edited collection. I explore some of the promises, possibilities and politics of aesthetics, emotion and wellbeing in science education. My earlier discussions read chapters as invitations to different political possibilities and actions in science education pedagogy. My later sections discuss how the assembled arguments raise fundamental questions for empirical and scholarly practices. I conclude highlighting different approaches to theorise aesthetics, emotions and wellbeing, as well as some of the limitations and tensions associated with studies of this genre.
This chapter offers some reflections on affect and measurement. In an era of high-stakes testing,... more This chapter offers some reflections on affect and measurement. In an era of high-stakes testing, I argue that there is an ever-present danger of overlooking important subjective aspects of educational research and practices. Interest has become a very popular measurement in science education influencing policy reforms. It is commonly noted that secondary children lack interest in science. However, the politics of what gets to count as interest are rarely discussed. What might we be valuing in our interest in interest? How might we value interest differently? Where and when? What promises and prospects might such interests hold?
Journal for Activist Science and Technology Education, 2020
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, citizens and social institutions have been called into acti... more During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, citizens and social institutions have been called into action. Questions of the future of school and an appropriate educational response to the pandemic have been widely discussed and debated. As scholars of science education, subjects particularly relevant to educating about the virus and its transmission, we discuss the roles and responsibilities of science education during pandemic. The format of this paper is a dialogue. We discuss theoretical positions related to science education and the pandemic, inequalities and injustices, recent anti-Black racism protests, and concrete pedagogical responses. As our discussion progressed, we increasingly recognize teachers and students as crucial agents in developing community-grounded, critical place-based, educational responses, recognising and addressing injustices related to differential global and local realities experienced during the pandemic.
Teaching Science: A Handbook for Primary and Secondary School Teachers Steven Alsop, Keith Hicks ... more Teaching Science: A Handbook for Primary and Secondary School Teachers Steven Alsop, Keith Hicks Designed for all trainee and newly qualified teachers, teacher trainers and mentors, this volume provides a contemporary handbook for the teaching of science, covering Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 in line with current DfEE and TTA guidelines. Cooperative Learning in Mathematics: A Handbook for Teachers ● Teaching Modern Foreign Languages: A Handbook for Teachers (Kogan Page Teaching) ● Managing Diversity (9th Edition) by Carr-Ruffino Dr., Norma (September 2, 2012) Paperback ● Managing Diversity (9th Edition) by Norma Carr-Ruffino Dr. (2012-09-02) ● Managing Diversity, People Skills for a Multicultural Workplace (7th Updated Edition) by Norma Carr● Ruffino (2007-09-03) Managing Diversity (9th Edition) 9th (ninth) edition by Carr-Ruffino Dr., Norma published by Pearson ● Learning Solutions (2012) Paperback Islam in a Nutshell ● Islam In A Nutshell: Islam Simplified ● Islamic Finance in a Nutshell: A Guide for Non-Specialists ● Black History In A Nutshell (April 12,2013) ● God in a Nutshell: A short guide to the big question ● Islam Exposed: What You Need to Know About the World's Most Dangerous Religion ● Islam in a Nutshell ● The Holy Koran of the Moorish Republic of New Kemit: New Kemit Version ● The Holy Koran Circle Seven ● Amar una sola vez (Saga Malory) (Spanish Edition) ● A solas con Dios; Mis Oraciones (Un Dia a La Vez) (Spanish Edition) ● Amar Una Sola Vez (La Saga de los Malory, 1) ● Sola otra vez (Spanish Edition) ● Mujer... Sí, somos una sola persona, somos iguales y a la vez tan distintas: dentro de ti hay luz, enciéndela ● (Spanish Edition)
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2017
Purpose This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainability imaginaries – unifying core assu... more Purpose This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainability imaginaries – unifying core assumptions on what sustainability entails held by stakeholders – set within a large suburban Canadian university. The study aims to expand the field of research into imaginaries by focusing on imaginaries within an institution as opposed to a societal or national level. Design/methodology/approach The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon empirical tools, such as collaborative thematic coding of interviews of university community members, to illustrate emergent imaginaries around sustainability at the institution. Findings This paper identifies four core sustainability imaginaries in an analysis of the interview data: sustainability as performance, sustainability as governance, sustainability as techno-efficiency and sustainability as community organizing. The paper then uses these imaginaries to analyse two recent university-wide events: the establishment of a high-level sustainabil...
Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 2017
In this response essay we offer some critical comments on the nature of science (NOS) and thereby... more In this response essay we offer some critical comments on the nature of science (NOS) and thereby hopefully extend Hodson and Wong's (2017, this issue) argument concerning understanding scientific practice. Drawing on selected theorising in science and technology studies (STS), we argue that NOS needs to take much more seriously sociopolitical contexts of its own formations and embrace wider contemporary social and ecological imbalances, precarities, and injustices. Drawing on Wittgenstein's later work, in particular notions of "family resemblances, " we are encouraged by Hodson and Wong's desires to focus on scientific practice. However, we suggest that their analysis is incomplete because it remains unduly wedded to lists of representative features prescinded from scientific practices. We conclude with three suggestions for opening up the NOS black box and extending the scope of NOS debate, by (a) more fully embracing science and education as dynamic, performative, grammatical investigations; (b) exploring ways of reconnecting scientific content (representations of nature) with NOS (scientific cultures); and (c) better understanding NOS as a successful situated curriculum movement. As such, we suggest, it might be distinctively positioned to help challenge increasingly widespread neoliberal, positivistic dreams of futurity.
Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 2015
Abstract:The work of Jacques Ranciere has become rather popular of late, with a series of high-pr... more Abstract:The work of Jacques Ranciere has become rather popular of late, with a series of high-profile advocates. In this article, we reflect on an elementary classroom and an experiment with pedagogy inspired by Ranciere's (1991) text, The Ignorant Schoolmaster. The authors discuss the text, outline a 20-lesson response that emerged from the study (focusing on reading-as-inquiry), and highlighting some of the possibilities, tensions, and ambiguities involved. The article concludes with discussion of how we sought to make sense of, and redistribute, our roles as science teacher-researchers by embracing teaching, will, and instability. We suggest becoming ignorant schoolmasters, wandering beyond the domain of the sensible, as we struggle to come to different terms with our political work.
This chapter’s aim is to highlight the importance of critical pedagogy for activism in science an... more This chapter’s aim is to highlight the importance of critical pedagogy for activism in science and environmental education, notably an «education for awareness» regarding the dominant ideologies and the instrumental rationality related to climate change. We tried to apply some of these principles at high school level, with French speaking students in Quebec, to question and enhance their conceptions of the nature of science, by inviting them to document issues on climate change, including uncertainties, controversies and research practices. We also present some results about their civic engagement on climate change.
The concepts of participation and deliberation have been invested with strong symbolic weight in ... more The concepts of participation and deliberation have been invested with strong symbolic weight in the field of science education and, more specifically, in the teaching of socio-scientific issues (SSIs). However, the teaching of socio-scientific issues has not yet emerged as the “natural” or “self-obvious” place for focusing attention on the socio-political management of socio-scientific issues. In the first section of this chapter, I outline a number of conceptual contributions originating in political philosophy, a field that has engaged in sustained reflection concerning the participation of ordinary citizens in the deliberations surrounding socio-political decision making. In the second section, I present the viewpoints of post-secondary/pre-university students (who are also training to become primary or secondary school teachers) concerning the management of socio-scientific issues. I also provide illustrations of how these students describe the roles played by various actors – citizens, industry, government, and members of the scientific community. In the third section, I identify the opportunities offered by these descriptions for redistributing legitimacy and re-examining the modalities of citizen participation in the management of socio-scientific issues.
Citizen science projects have become quite popular of late but still retain some controversy. Wit... more Citizen science projects have become quite popular of late but still retain some controversy. Within a particular Canadian context of declining governmental environmental monitoring, this chapter explores the ideal of enhanced civic participation and experience gained through a long-term citizen science project. We offer this as one possible expression of activism. Drawing on specific tree planting and long-term monitoring programs established by the Association for Canadian Educational Resources (Climate’s Sake) as an illustration of citizen science, we argue that these programs offer opportunities for those involved to increase their knowledge of local ecologies, share concerns and potentially contest local forest policies and management approaches linked with climate change and biodiversity conservation. We conclude by highlighting some associated tensions and contradictions.
There is surprisingly little known about the emotional aspects of science education. A senior sch... more There is surprisingly little known about the emotional aspects of science education. A senior scholar, over a decade ago, called for a fundamental shift in our field, suggesting that the “affective area will prove to be crucial, in research and curriculum planning in the future” (Head, 1989, p. 162). However, despite periodic forays into monitoring students’ attitudes-towards-science, the “effect of affect” in the teaching and learning of science continues to be largely ignored. Existing research, while sparse, mostly presents a rather gloomy picture. After decades of research and curriculum reform, sources indicate that while some elements of science education engender fascination and awe, too many middle and secondary school students in high-income countries find school science overly mundane and lacking relevance (Sjoberg, 2002). Indeed, recent work suggests that attitudes and post-compulsory involvement in science education (particularly by women and ethnic minorities) are still on the decline (Osborne et al., 2003). But while research has been successful in defining the problem, it has yet to say very much about the solution, and this clearly needs to change. In broad terms, this is the challenge taken up here: to collect together contemporary theorising about the relationship between affect and cognition in science education and explore the implications that this has for further research and pedagogy. It is the centrality of affect and its lack of consideration that has driven my desire to compile this edited collection. After all, there is overwhelming evidence from a diversity of fields including Psychology (Sutton & Wheatley, 2003), Philosophy (Goldie, 2002), Cultural Theory (Shweder & LeVine, 1986), Feminist studies (Boler, 1999) and Neuroscience (Demasio, 2000, 2004) and Science Education itself (see Alsop & Watts, 2003a; Falk & Dierking, 2000; Zembylas, 2002, 2004), that affect and cognition cannot be meaningfully understood as disparate entities. Emotions, after all, have considerable influence over what happens in the classroom. Some (such as, joy, love, happiness, and hope) act to enhance education, optimise student enjoyment and achievement. Here to use the language of Csikszentmihalyi (1988, p. 127) teachers and learners become swept up in a world of consciousness, a “flow experience,” describing themselves as being “carried away by a current”; existentially lost in thought. Now, education is more than the memorisation of a curriculum subject, the anesthetised acquisition of a remote object. It is the beauty and delight of becoming absorbed, seeing the world in different ways with different possibilities. It is
... CIDA) teacher education project located in rural Peru, involves the collaboration of universi... more ... CIDA) teacher education project located in rural Peru, involves the collaboration of universities in ... lost in urgent conversations about the pressing demands of the new urban and ... many other rural teachers during our participation in a Canadian International Development Agency ...
This paper continues a conversation about Wittgenstein’s picture of language and meaning and its ... more This paper continues a conversation about Wittgenstein’s picture of language and meaning and its potential applications for educational theorising. It takes the form of a response to Wolff-Michael Roth’s earlier paper “Heeding Wittgenstein on “understanding” and “meaning”: A pragmatist and concrete human psychological approach in/for education,” in which Roth problematizes the use of the terms “understanding” and “meaning” in education discourse and proposes their abandonment. Whilst we agree with Roth about a series of central points, at the same time we maintain that he has taken his argument in directions antithetical to our reading of Wittgenstein’s work. We offer four points of departure, exploring themes of: (i) appropriate questioning; (ii) eliminativism; (iii) language-games and grammar; and (iv) productivity, explanation, and a science of learning. We conclude by discussing ways consistent with Wittgenstein’s thought to go on in thinking about education.
If science education is so complex, then how should we sense it, know it, feel it and perform it?... more If science education is so complex, then how should we sense it, know it, feel it and perform it? If we are to escape our Cartesian blinkers, we need to teach ourselves new ways of thinking, of feeling, of sensing and relating in science education. Drawing on affect theory and personal experiences, this chapter offers a series of reflections on the edited collection. I explore some of the promises, possibilities and politics of aesthetics, emotion and wellbeing in science education. My earlier discussions read chapters as invitations to different political possibilities and actions in science education pedagogy. My later sections discuss how the assembled arguments raise fundamental questions for empirical and scholarly practices. I conclude highlighting different approaches to theorise aesthetics, emotions and wellbeing, as well as some of the limitations and tensions associated with studies of this genre.
This chapter offers some reflections on affect and measurement. In an era of high-stakes testing,... more This chapter offers some reflections on affect and measurement. In an era of high-stakes testing, I argue that there is an ever-present danger of overlooking important subjective aspects of educational research and practices. Interest has become a very popular measurement in science education influencing policy reforms. It is commonly noted that secondary children lack interest in science. However, the politics of what gets to count as interest are rarely discussed. What might we be valuing in our interest in interest? How might we value interest differently? Where and when? What promises and prospects might such interests hold?
Journal for Activist Science and Technology Education, 2020
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, citizens and social institutions have been called into acti... more During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, citizens and social institutions have been called into action. Questions of the future of school and an appropriate educational response to the pandemic have been widely discussed and debated. As scholars of science education, subjects particularly relevant to educating about the virus and its transmission, we discuss the roles and responsibilities of science education during pandemic. The format of this paper is a dialogue. We discuss theoretical positions related to science education and the pandemic, inequalities and injustices, recent anti-Black racism protests, and concrete pedagogical responses. As our discussion progressed, we increasingly recognize teachers and students as crucial agents in developing community-grounded, critical place-based, educational responses, recognising and addressing injustices related to differential global and local realities experienced during the pandemic.
Teaching Science: A Handbook for Primary and Secondary School Teachers Steven Alsop, Keith Hicks ... more Teaching Science: A Handbook for Primary and Secondary School Teachers Steven Alsop, Keith Hicks Designed for all trainee and newly qualified teachers, teacher trainers and mentors, this volume provides a contemporary handbook for the teaching of science, covering Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 in line with current DfEE and TTA guidelines. Cooperative Learning in Mathematics: A Handbook for Teachers ● Teaching Modern Foreign Languages: A Handbook for Teachers (Kogan Page Teaching) ● Managing Diversity (9th Edition) by Carr-Ruffino Dr., Norma (September 2, 2012) Paperback ● Managing Diversity (9th Edition) by Norma Carr-Ruffino Dr. (2012-09-02) ● Managing Diversity, People Skills for a Multicultural Workplace (7th Updated Edition) by Norma Carr● Ruffino (2007-09-03) Managing Diversity (9th Edition) 9th (ninth) edition by Carr-Ruffino Dr., Norma published by Pearson ● Learning Solutions (2012) Paperback Islam in a Nutshell ● Islam In A Nutshell: Islam Simplified ● Islamic Finance in a Nutshell: A Guide for Non-Specialists ● Black History In A Nutshell (April 12,2013) ● God in a Nutshell: A short guide to the big question ● Islam Exposed: What You Need to Know About the World's Most Dangerous Religion ● Islam in a Nutshell ● The Holy Koran of the Moorish Republic of New Kemit: New Kemit Version ● The Holy Koran Circle Seven ● Amar una sola vez (Saga Malory) (Spanish Edition) ● A solas con Dios; Mis Oraciones (Un Dia a La Vez) (Spanish Edition) ● Amar Una Sola Vez (La Saga de los Malory, 1) ● Sola otra vez (Spanish Edition) ● Mujer... Sí, somos una sola persona, somos iguales y a la vez tan distintas: dentro de ti hay luz, enciéndela ● (Spanish Edition)
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2017
Purpose This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainability imaginaries – unifying core assu... more Purpose This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainability imaginaries – unifying core assumptions on what sustainability entails held by stakeholders – set within a large suburban Canadian university. The study aims to expand the field of research into imaginaries by focusing on imaginaries within an institution as opposed to a societal or national level. Design/methodology/approach The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon empirical tools, such as collaborative thematic coding of interviews of university community members, to illustrate emergent imaginaries around sustainability at the institution. Findings This paper identifies four core sustainability imaginaries in an analysis of the interview data: sustainability as performance, sustainability as governance, sustainability as techno-efficiency and sustainability as community organizing. The paper then uses these imaginaries to analyse two recent university-wide events: the establishment of a high-level sustainabil...
Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 2017
In this response essay we offer some critical comments on the nature of science (NOS) and thereby... more In this response essay we offer some critical comments on the nature of science (NOS) and thereby hopefully extend Hodson and Wong's (2017, this issue) argument concerning understanding scientific practice. Drawing on selected theorising in science and technology studies (STS), we argue that NOS needs to take much more seriously sociopolitical contexts of its own formations and embrace wider contemporary social and ecological imbalances, precarities, and injustices. Drawing on Wittgenstein's later work, in particular notions of "family resemblances, " we are encouraged by Hodson and Wong's desires to focus on scientific practice. However, we suggest that their analysis is incomplete because it remains unduly wedded to lists of representative features prescinded from scientific practices. We conclude with three suggestions for opening up the NOS black box and extending the scope of NOS debate, by (a) more fully embracing science and education as dynamic, performative, grammatical investigations; (b) exploring ways of reconnecting scientific content (representations of nature) with NOS (scientific cultures); and (c) better understanding NOS as a successful situated curriculum movement. As such, we suggest, it might be distinctively positioned to help challenge increasingly widespread neoliberal, positivistic dreams of futurity.
Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 2015
Abstract:The work of Jacques Ranciere has become rather popular of late, with a series of high-pr... more Abstract:The work of Jacques Ranciere has become rather popular of late, with a series of high-profile advocates. In this article, we reflect on an elementary classroom and an experiment with pedagogy inspired by Ranciere's (1991) text, The Ignorant Schoolmaster. The authors discuss the text, outline a 20-lesson response that emerged from the study (focusing on reading-as-inquiry), and highlighting some of the possibilities, tensions, and ambiguities involved. The article concludes with discussion of how we sought to make sense of, and redistribute, our roles as science teacher-researchers by embracing teaching, will, and instability. We suggest becoming ignorant schoolmasters, wandering beyond the domain of the sensible, as we struggle to come to different terms with our political work.
This chapter’s aim is to highlight the importance of critical pedagogy for activism in science an... more This chapter’s aim is to highlight the importance of critical pedagogy for activism in science and environmental education, notably an «education for awareness» regarding the dominant ideologies and the instrumental rationality related to climate change. We tried to apply some of these principles at high school level, with French speaking students in Quebec, to question and enhance their conceptions of the nature of science, by inviting them to document issues on climate change, including uncertainties, controversies and research practices. We also present some results about their civic engagement on climate change.
The concepts of participation and deliberation have been invested with strong symbolic weight in ... more The concepts of participation and deliberation have been invested with strong symbolic weight in the field of science education and, more specifically, in the teaching of socio-scientific issues (SSIs). However, the teaching of socio-scientific issues has not yet emerged as the “natural” or “self-obvious” place for focusing attention on the socio-political management of socio-scientific issues. In the first section of this chapter, I outline a number of conceptual contributions originating in political philosophy, a field that has engaged in sustained reflection concerning the participation of ordinary citizens in the deliberations surrounding socio-political decision making. In the second section, I present the viewpoints of post-secondary/pre-university students (who are also training to become primary or secondary school teachers) concerning the management of socio-scientific issues. I also provide illustrations of how these students describe the roles played by various actors – citizens, industry, government, and members of the scientific community. In the third section, I identify the opportunities offered by these descriptions for redistributing legitimacy and re-examining the modalities of citizen participation in the management of socio-scientific issues.
Citizen science projects have become quite popular of late but still retain some controversy. Wit... more Citizen science projects have become quite popular of late but still retain some controversy. Within a particular Canadian context of declining governmental environmental monitoring, this chapter explores the ideal of enhanced civic participation and experience gained through a long-term citizen science project. We offer this as one possible expression of activism. Drawing on specific tree planting and long-term monitoring programs established by the Association for Canadian Educational Resources (Climate’s Sake) as an illustration of citizen science, we argue that these programs offer opportunities for those involved to increase their knowledge of local ecologies, share concerns and potentially contest local forest policies and management approaches linked with climate change and biodiversity conservation. We conclude by highlighting some associated tensions and contradictions.
There is surprisingly little known about the emotional aspects of science education. A senior sch... more There is surprisingly little known about the emotional aspects of science education. A senior scholar, over a decade ago, called for a fundamental shift in our field, suggesting that the “affective area will prove to be crucial, in research and curriculum planning in the future” (Head, 1989, p. 162). However, despite periodic forays into monitoring students’ attitudes-towards-science, the “effect of affect” in the teaching and learning of science continues to be largely ignored. Existing research, while sparse, mostly presents a rather gloomy picture. After decades of research and curriculum reform, sources indicate that while some elements of science education engender fascination and awe, too many middle and secondary school students in high-income countries find school science overly mundane and lacking relevance (Sjoberg, 2002). Indeed, recent work suggests that attitudes and post-compulsory involvement in science education (particularly by women and ethnic minorities) are still on the decline (Osborne et al., 2003). But while research has been successful in defining the problem, it has yet to say very much about the solution, and this clearly needs to change. In broad terms, this is the challenge taken up here: to collect together contemporary theorising about the relationship between affect and cognition in science education and explore the implications that this has for further research and pedagogy. It is the centrality of affect and its lack of consideration that has driven my desire to compile this edited collection. After all, there is overwhelming evidence from a diversity of fields including Psychology (Sutton & Wheatley, 2003), Philosophy (Goldie, 2002), Cultural Theory (Shweder & LeVine, 1986), Feminist studies (Boler, 1999) and Neuroscience (Demasio, 2000, 2004) and Science Education itself (see Alsop & Watts, 2003a; Falk & Dierking, 2000; Zembylas, 2002, 2004), that affect and cognition cannot be meaningfully understood as disparate entities. Emotions, after all, have considerable influence over what happens in the classroom. Some (such as, joy, love, happiness, and hope) act to enhance education, optimise student enjoyment and achievement. Here to use the language of Csikszentmihalyi (1988, p. 127) teachers and learners become swept up in a world of consciousness, a “flow experience,” describing themselves as being “carried away by a current”; existentially lost in thought. Now, education is more than the memorisation of a curriculum subject, the anesthetised acquisition of a remote object. It is the beauty and delight of becoming absorbed, seeing the world in different ways with different possibilities. It is
... CIDA) teacher education project located in rural Peru, involves the collaboration of universi... more ... CIDA) teacher education project located in rural Peru, involves the collaboration of universities in ... lost in urgent conversations about the pressing demands of the new urban and ... many other rural teachers during our participation in a Canadian International Development Agency ...
Uploads
Papers by Steve Alsop