Training Kuwaiti Teachers to Lead: A Case Study of Competitive Debate at the Basic Education College

This paper presents a case study of a competitive debate program designed for teachers-in-training at the Basic Education College in Kuwait. Stakeholders at different levels have expressed an interest in introducing more constructivist-based pedagogies into the Kuwaiti national education system, but institutional and ideological challenges have hindered implementation. Teachers at the college designed and implemented a debate program based on constructivist principles of authenticity, student meaning-making, collaboration, and high performance expectations. Survey data suggest that participants experienced debate as a transformative experience, changing their perception of themselves, of the world, and of their ability to effect change in it. Participants came to imagine themselves as future system leaders preparing future generations with higher-order skills involving complex solving, which an increasingly complex social reality demanded. From 2015 to 2018, a group of professors formed debate teams at the Kuwait University National English Debate League. This endeavour formed the empirical research presented here as evidence to support a move from instructivist teaching to constructivist learning for future teachers in Kuwait.

Cultivating historical consciousness in the history classroom: Uncovering the subtleties of student meaning making with the help of found poetry

This article explores student meaning making in a Grade 11 US history unit on the Second World War. The 10-lesson unit was designed as an experiment that aimed to apply an instructional model of historical consciousness to a classroom context. Although the notion of historical consciousness has gained significant interest in the field of history education, translating it into educational practice remains a challenge. In this study, it refers to a disposition to make meaning of the past for oneself, which is manifested in three meaning-making abilities and processes (Boix Mansilla and Gardner, 2007; Nordgren and Johansson, 2015; Rüsen, 2004). To study the manifestation of historical consciousness in the learning process during this unit, I employed found poetry on collected classroom transcripts and observations, as well as student work. I turned to this qualitative, arts-informed method when I realised the analytic methods that I had employed so far failed to capture important subtleties of students’ historical consciousness emerging from the data. In this paper, I present and discuss the results of my analysis, offer a rationale for using found poetry in history education research and reflect on the need for relevant and meaningful school history.

College Student Meaning Making and Interest Maintenance During COVID-19: From Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) to Science Learning Being Off-Campus and Online

In response to the outbreak of COVID-19 the national landscape of higher education changed quickly and dramatically to move “online” in the Spring semester of 2020. While distressing to both faculty and students, it presents a unique opportunity to explore how students responded to this unexpected and challenging learning situation. In four undergraduate STEM courses that incorporated course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs)—which are often focused on discovery learning and laboratory research—we had an existing study in progress to track students' interest development at five time points over the Spring 2020 semester. Via this ongoing study we were able to investigate how students stay engaged in their college science courses when facing unexpected challenges and obstacles to their learning. Longitudinal survey data from 41 students in these CURE courses demonstrated that students' situational interest dropped significantly when their CURE courses unexpectedly shifted from hands-on, discovery-based, and laboratory-based instruction to online instruction. Although we observed a dramatic decline in student interest in general after the CURE courses moved fully online, the decline rates varied across students. Students who were able to make meaningful connections between the learning activities and their personal or career goals were more likely to maintain a higher level of interest in the course. Implications for practice are discussed.

Making Meaning Count: A Phenomenological Approach to Understanding Student Meaning-Making Processes and Academic Outcomes

The income-gap between Canadian families has widened in recent years. Students from low-income households often start their educational careers behind their peers. This gap in educational attainment and advantage often follows them throughout the duration of their educational development (Davies and Guppy 2010). While these systemic inequalities continue to perpetuate social processes resulting in the limitations of student capabilities, this paper works towards establishing a phenomenological lens which may be used to mitigate the disparity in the academic performance of students from low-income households compared to those of their peers – in particular, the ways in which poverty impacts self-concept and, ensuingly, academic performance amongst students. To establish this framework, this paper explores the phenomenological concepts of the life-world and the theory of embodiment. References: Davies, S., & Guppy, N. (2010). The schooled society: An introduction to the sociology of education. Oxford University Press. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Exploring a pedagogy for meaning-making in physical education

This paper responds to calls for an exploration into pedagogies of meaning within physical education. Developing meaningful educational experiences in physical education for lifelong movement involves supporting students to explore their personal experiences in movement and to use these to derive a greater understanding of themselves and the world in which they live. Following a brief overview of the role of meaning-making in physical education, a case study is offered as a practical example for how reflection can be utilised to explore movement as meaningful. The case study presents a series of steps that provide detail about a meaning-making process undertaken during a physical education class. Data suggest that setting aside time for reflection and the generation of rich movement narratives aligned to a ‘first rush of movement’, can shed light on what students find meaningful ‘in’ movement in ways that link physical education to experiences across varying social and environmental contexts. Through giving priority to bodily understandings of movement as felt, sensory experience, participants ( n = 44) were able to express meaning across a wide range of movement contexts. I contend that the exploration of student meaning in physical education is engaging, informative, and serves to extend possibilities for what curriculum is seen as legitimate in physical education by/for whom. The paper sheds light on the use of embodied meaning-making stories as a potential springboard for further exploration and activity in physical education.