Why Did You Choose to Become a Teacher?

Author(s):  
Sharon L. Gilbert

In this chapter, the author shares her experience teaching Chinese English teachers in China for four weeks. At the beginning of the training program she asked, “Why did you choose to be a teacher?” The question had no purpose other than to start a conversation that might give some insight into the Chinese teachers' motivation to teach so she might find some common ground with them. She was quite surprised by their answers; they uniformly replied that they had not chosen the teaching profession. In fact, several expressed dissatisfaction with the profession and wished they could choose another one. Their responses caused the author to ask herself what it meant to have no voice in choices about profession, future goals, or even having children. What part did cultural norms and social structures have in self-determination? How did cultural norms and social practices impact a sense of purpose? How have our own cultural experiences influenced our perceptions of and reactions to their responses? Her reflections on this experience are the basis for this case study.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-67
Author(s):  
Michelina D’Allessio

This article falls within a branch of studies aimed at highlighting the experiences of some neglected protagonists of Italian education through their professional writings. Indeed, school journals and records give an insight into the transformations that the teaching profession and school culture have undergone throughout the years. From such a historiographical perspective, this contribution highlights the «new school» experiment carried out by the teacher Arturo Arcomano (1927-2007) in a small town in Basilicata, a region of Southern Italy, in the mid-twentieth century. By looking at the material held in the private archive of this educator, scholar, professor and politician, particularly his school journals, as well as at the notebooks and school papers produced by his pupils, we can get a sense of the «new life» breathed through the school of Roccanova, where Arcomano applied the teaching methodologies that were becoming popular in those years, like the use of free writing and Freinet’s printing press at school. The Arcomano case study enables us to understand both the resistance and the push towards this experimentation, which was based on a «different» pedagogical culture, and action intended to fit the environmental context. The use of the sources that can be found in Arcomano’s personal archive on the one hand enables us to define the human and professional profile of the teacher, and on the other, contributes to the reconstruction of the renovation process that affected education in Southern Italy in the mid-twentieth century. 


Author(s):  
Carmen Durham

This case study investigated how one teacher, Lidia (a pseudonym), used her own cross-cultural experiences to socially and academically assist elementary school students who were crossing cultural boundaries of their own. This study used ethnographic interviews and classroom observations to explore Lidia’s experiences and struggles as she crossed cultural boundaries and built intercultural competence and how those experiences related to her teaching methods. Lidia used stories, multicultural images, and the students’ home languages so that her students could become confident in their multicultural and multilingual identities instead of solely assimilating. Teaching interculturally for Lidia meant empowering students to balance their home cultures while creating meaningful opportunities for them to practice English and school cultural norms. This study adds to literature on intercultural competence and communities of practice by exploring how interculturality may be advantageous in helping teachers work with diverse and international students by allowing them to act as brokers within the school’s community.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-143
Author(s):  
Julie Boyles

An ethnographic case study approach to understanding women’s actions and reactions to husbands’ emigration—or potential emigration—offers a distinct set of challenges to a U.S.-based researcher.  International migration research in a foreign context likely offers challenges in language, culture, lifestyle, as well as potential gender norm impediments. A mixed methods approach contributed to successfully overcoming barriers through an array of research methods, strategies, and tactics, as well as practicing flexibility in data gathering methods. Even this researcher’s influence on the research was minimized and alleviated, to a degree, through ascertaining common ground with many of the women. Research with the women of San Juan Guelavía, Oaxaca, Mexico offered numerous and constant challenges, each overcome with ensuing rewards.


Romanticism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Ruth Knezevich

The genre of annotated verse represents an under-explored form of transporting romanticism. In annotated, locodescriptive poems like those in Anna Seward's Llangollen Vale, readers are invited to read not only the spatiality of the landscapes depicted in the verse but also the landscape of the page itself. Seward's poems, with their focus on understanding geographical, political, and historical spaces both real and imaginary, provide geocritical insight into poetic productions of the early Romantic era. Likewise, geocriticism offers a fresh and useful – even necessary – analytic approach to such poems. I adopt Anna Seward as a case study in annotated verse and argue that attending to the materiality and paratextuality of her work allows us to access the complexities of her poetry and prose as well as her position within the wider framework of transporting Romanticism.


Somatechnics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svenja J. Kratz

Abstract: Presented from an ArtScience practitioner's perspective, this paper provides an overview of Svenja Kratz's experience working as an artist within the area of cell and tissue culture at QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI). Using The Absence of Alice, a multi-medium exhibition based on the experience of culturing cells, as a case study, the paper gives insight into the artist's approach to working across art and science and how ideas, processes, and languages from each discipline can intermesh and extend the possibilities of each system. The paper also provides an overview of her most recent artwork, The Human Skin Equivalent/Experience Project, which involves the creation of personal jewellery items incorporating human skin equivalent models grown from the artist's skin and participant cells. Referencing this project, and other contemporary bioart works, the value of ArtScience is discussed, focusing in particular on the way in which cross-art-science projects enable an alternative voice to enter into scientific dialogues and have the potential to yield outcomes valuable to both disciplines.


Author(s):  
Jifeng Chen ◽  
Peilin Song ◽  
Thomas M. Shaw ◽  
Franco Stellari ◽  
Lynne Gignac ◽  
...  

Abstract In this paper, we propose a new methodology and test system to enable the early detection and precise localization of Time-Dependent-Dielectric-Breakdown (TDDB) occurrence in Back-End-of-Line (BEOL) interconnection. The methodology is implemented as a novel Integrated Reliability Test System (IRTS). In particular, through our methodology and test system, we can easily synchronize electrical measurements and emission microscopy images to gather more accurate information and thereby gain insight into the nature of the defects and their relationship to chip manufacturing steps and materials, so that we can ultimately better engineer these steps for higher reliable systems. The details of our IRTS will be presented along with a case study and preliminary analysis results.


Author(s):  
Kaye Chalwell ◽  
Therese Cumming

Radical subject acceleration, or moving students through a subject area faster than is typical, including skipping grades, is a widely accepted approach to support students who are gifted and talented. This is done in order to match the student’s cognitive level and learning needs. This case study explored radical subject acceleration for gifted students by focusing on one school’s response to the learning needs of a ten year old mathematically gifted student. It provides insight into the challenges, accommodations and approach to radical subject acceleration in an Australian school. It explored the processes and decisions made to ensure that a gifted student’s learning needs were met and identified salient issues for radical subject acceleration. Lessons learned from this case study may be helpful for schools considering radical acceleration.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-29
Author(s):  
JESRINA ANN XAVIER ◽  
EDMUND TERENCE GOMEZ

This article investigates changes in the conduct of ethnic enterprises followingthe emergence of a new generation of owners with varying class resources andas market conditions transform. The case study method is used to examinethe impact of changing class resources and market conditions on ethnicallybasedenterprises, exploring the effects of generational transitions among smallIndian owned companies in the food industry in Malaysia. The results providean insight into key changes in the evolution of Indian owned enterprises. Theyindicate that changes in class resources and market conditions have enabledIndian owned food-based companies to alter their products to fit a largermarket, while responding to the demands of a rapidly modernizing society.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Petronis ◽  
◽  
Vincent Twomey ◽  
William McCarthy ◽  
Craig MaGee
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-45
Author(s):  
Andreas Schmidt

AbstractThe chapter argues for a more nuanced and empirically based understanding of the discourse on law and socio-cultural norms in Old Icelandic literature on the grounds of a narratological reading of ‘Færeyinga saga’ as a case study. It has often been claimed that Icelandic sources express an ideal of freedom based on communality as guaranteed by the law. By contrast, ‘Færeyinga saga’ represents a cynical discourse on power politics that renders law as an invariable concept obsolete and works solely on the principle that ‘might is right’. This cynicism, however, is presented in a form that leaves the narrative open to interpretation, showing that regardless of its possible dating, narrative literature can serve as a starting point for social discussion. Consequently, the discourse on law in medieval Iceland must be perceived as more polyphonic than has been allowed for by previous unifying readings in scholarship.


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