scholarly journals Science Can Inform Educational Practice: The Case of Literacy

Author(s):  
William Tunmer ◽  
Jane Prochnow ◽  
James Chapman

Antinaturalists, interpretivists, critical theorists, postmodernists, and deconstructivists have been highly critical of educational research methods that are theory driven, hypothesis testing, or generalization producing. According to extreme versions of these views research can only provide findings that are “contextually bound”, in which case educational researchers should concentrate more on “telling stories” than “crunching numbers”. With respect to literacy, these critics have questioned the feasibility of attempting to develop a general theory of how children learn to read (and write), and what can be done to maximize the effectiveness of literacy instruction for all children in the light of such findings. Instead, children’s literacy experiences are seen as firmly embedded in social contexts that uniquely give meaning to their uses of literacy. In this paper we present an alternative view that begins with a definition of reading literacy that simultaneously incorporates psychological, linguistic, and sociological perspectives. We then present a brief critique of the position that literacy is primarily social, political, and relative, before turning to the primary focus of the paper, which is to provide specific examples of how theory-driven quantitative research can inform educational practice in literacy.

Author(s):  
A.N. Rudyakov ◽  

The theoretical and applied aspects of linguistics associated with the use of the functional approach were studied. The analysis of the interrelated problems of the formation and development of functional literacy, reading literacy, as well as perception and understanding of the text was carried out taking into account the principles of studying and describing linguistic phenomena outlined in the earlier own publications. The text was described as a major object of Russian philology at the present stage and as an instrument of social interaction, which is structurally determined by its function. The obtained results confirm the relevance of the problem of studying the patterns of perception and understanding the text as an integral object rather than a source of linguistic units of different tiers. The functional definition of the text was introduced, thereby making it possible to supplement the educational practice with a methodology of work that takes into account the need to develop students’ skills and abilities associated with the conscious and systematic extraction of information from texts of various kinds and the use of this information in their activities.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Francisco Xavier Morales

The problem of identity is an issue of contemporary society that is not only expressed in daily life concerns but also in discourses of politics and social movements. Nevertheless, the I and the needs of self-fulfillment usually are taken for granted. This paper offers thoughts regarding individual identity based on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. From this perspective, identity is not observed as a thing or as a subject, but rather as a “selfillusion” of a system of consciousness, which differentiates itself from the world, event after event, in a contingent way. As concerns the definition  of contents of self-identity, the structures of social systems define who is a person, how he or she should act, and how much esteem he or she should receive. These structures are adopted by consciousness as its own identity structures; however, some social contexts are more relevant for self-identity construction than others. Moral communication increases the probability that structure appropriation takes place, since the emotional element of identity is linked to the esteem/misesteem received by the individual from the interactions in which he or she participates.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vitaly Kuyukov

Quantum tunneling of noncommutative geometry gives the definition of time in the form of holography, that is, in the form of a closed surface integral. Ultimately, the holography of time shows the dualism between quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Myroslava Vovk

AbstractTrends in development of folklore studies in the research and education space at Ukrainian and foreign universities have been analyzed. They are fundamentalization, synthesis of academic science and educational practice, professionalization, institutionalization, humanitarization, anthropoligization, interdisciplinarity. It has been defined that in Ukrainian and foreign folkloristic discourse of the 20th – the beginning of the 21th centuries, folklore is studied through the prism of functional, communicative, anthropological, context-based approaches that is partially realized in the official definition of folklore according to the 1989 UNESCO Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore. It has been found out that while structuring the content of folkloristic disciplines as well as directing future specialists’ researches the multivectoring of folklore studies allows instructors to use the achievements of folkloristic directions that were formed in historical retrospective and actively developed at the modern stage: linguofolkloristics, ethnomusicology, folk therapy (folk music therapy, fairytale therapy, folk dance therapy), etc. It has been justified that folklore studies in Ukrainian and foreign research and education space is being developed as an interdisciplinary science based on the historical and pedagogical experience and taking into account modern integration processes that define the problematics of the content of folkloristic, culturological training of future pedagogue-researcher who is to be educated as a man of culture, nationally aware and, at the same time, multicultural personality.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Styra Avins

To speak of Brahms and Beethoven in the same breath is almost a cliché: Brahms was intimately conscious of Beethoven's music from early youth. This article describes the details of his youthful involvement, the compositions he had in his repertoire as well as those other works which had a powerful effect on his development. By age 20, Brahms was frequently compared to Beethoven by people who met him or heard him play. My interest is in the way he was influenced by Beethoven and the manner in which he eventually found his own voice. The compositional history of his First Symphony provides the primary focus: its long gestation, and the alleged quote by Brahms given in Max Kalbeck's massive biography: ‘I'll never write a symphony, you have no idea what it feels like … to hear the footsteps of a giant behind one’. The reference is presumably to Beethoven, but there exists no corroborating evidence that Brahms ever said those words. They gained credence as one writer after another simply accepted Kalbeck's word. Yet substantial evidence exists that in writing his biography, Kalbeck distorted and even invented ‘facts’ when it suited his purposes, including a specific instance dealing with writing a symphony. An alternative view of the symphony's long gestation is based on a view of Brahms's compositional history. He wrote for musical forces he knew at first hand, and only from 1872 to 1875 did he have command of an orchestra. Intriguingly, while fulfilling the contemporary accepted demands of a symphony after Beethoven, Brahms devised an unusual strategy for the final movement, the basis of its great success.


2021 ◽  
pp. 540-554
Author(s):  
Tegan Bristow ◽  
João Orecchia Zúñiga

This chapter presents an examination of why—in contemporary Africa, with Southern Africa as the primary focus—there are very few artists working with sound in a manner that fits the paradigm of sound art as it is known in Euro-America. Emphasis is not placed on a lack of intellectual engagement, which is significant in the Euro-American definition of sound art. What is presented does not aim to deviate from this, but rather acts to affirm an engagement with alternative forms of knowledge and mechanisms of sound found in the South. Three areas are explored; these however are interlinked and do not stand alone. The first is an understanding of the practice of interdisciplinarity as political engagement. The second explores the role of community and communal interaction with sound and how this is fundamental to form in the region. The third extends this by showing how the histories of knowledge and power are fundamental to these explorations in the region, emphasizing how contemporary explorations of sound are used to both contain and shift these histories. The chapter takes shape with the use of case studies and draws on interviews conducted by the authors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Myran ◽  
Ian Sutherland

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to reframe our field’s narrative around the science of learning. We seek to (1) describe the patterns within educational leadership and administration that are conceptually tethered to scientific management and highlight the absence of clearly defined conceptions of learning, (2) provide a synthesis of the science of learning, and (3) offer a “progressive problem shift” that promotes such a reframing. Methods: An integration of theory building methods with problem posing/identification strategies is designed to deconstruct the field of educational leadership through a science of learning lens and build toward theory that is more adaptive to our goals of leading for learning. Findings: Our findings stem from the central observation that educational leadership and administration has to date produced no conceptual or explicit operational definition of learning. Lacking such a definition, the field has been vulnerable to outlooks about learning that default to assumptions notably shaped by scientific management. This is in contrast to our review of the learning sciences literature, which emphasizes that learning is dependent on the active and deliberate agency of the learner and a host of introspective outlooks and behaviors and that these individual learning characteristics are situated within complex and dynamic social contexts that serve to mediate and shape learning. Implications and Conclusions: We argue that the future of our field rests, in large measure, on our ability to address the incongruences between our field’s foundations in scientific management and the science of learning.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Sowey

Forced marriage was criminalised in Australia in March 2013, putting the issue on the agenda of policy-makers and social service providers. Increasingly, however, it is being recognised that criminal laws alone cannot address the practice; protective and preventative strategies are also needed. This paper argues that strategies to address forced marriage will be most effective if they are informed by contextualised and emic understandings of the phenomenon, that is, by the perspectives of individuals, families and communities who are directly affected by forced marriage. Primary research is required to obtain such perspectives. Research into forced marriage in Australia is still in its infancy, and primary research is almost non-existent. This paper, then, looks to primary research from the UK and other comparable Western multicultural nations, offering a critique of this body of literature before drawing out what is revealed about why marriages are forced, how marriages are forced, and what people in forced marriage situations want. The implications of criminal prosecution are then considered in light of this emic understanding. The legal definition of forced marriage hinges on the concept of consent: it is consent that distinguishes an arranged marriage from a forced one. In the UK, the notion of consent has been robustly problematised. However this is not the case in Australia at present, and this paper critiques the value of the concept of consent given the social contexts of forced marriage described above. The implications of this critique for the application of Australia’s forced marriage law are then considered. Finally, from a place of contextualised and emic understanding of forced marriage, this paper considers how protective and preventative strategies might be enhanced.


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