Materially Just: Virtuous Methodology in Fascist Times

In this article, I consider how our materialist inquiry might enact a sense of justice and virtue in these fascist times. I do so through the following overarching claim: addressing fascism requires a simultaneous challenge to the seductive entanglements of liberalism, humanism, and capitalism, a dense skein of ethical, ontological, epistemological, and material formations we order to conventionally live our lives. To engage such an argument, I first examine fascism as a governing force within our daily lives that works to shape the material contexts we encounter each and every day. To productively engage with the ubiquity of fascist ways of living, I examine philosophical inquiry practices that extend from a decidedly materialist orientation.

Reflective Inquiry Practices of Instructional Leaders in Public Schools in Manila, Philippines

Objective - This study aims to explore the reflective inquiry practices of instructional leaders and examine if there is significant difference in the respondents’ reflective inquiry practices based on their personal profile. Methodology/Technique – The survey-questionnaire underwent reliability testing and yielded a result of .936. Appropriate statistical tools such as frequency or mean and ANOVA were used to determine the reflective inquiry practices of the instructional leaders and the significant difference of reflective inquiry based on their personal profile. Finding – The results indicate that the instructional leaders’ level of reflective inquiry practices is high, and it has no significant difference based on their personal profile. However, there exists a significant difference in the respondents’ level of reflective inquiry practices according to years of service and educational attainment. Novelty – Much research has investigated reflective inquiry as a pedagogical practice of teachers, but very few have attempted to study reflective inquiry as a supervisory practice of instructional leaders. There have been no empirical studies that have made use of reflective inquiry in the professional practice of instructional leaders in the local context. Type of Paper: Empirical JEL Classification: I120, I121. Keywords: Reflective Inquiry, Reflective Practice, Instructional Leaders. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Castaño, K.M.N; Litao, R.A. (2021). Reflective Inquiry Practices of Instructional Leaders in Public Schools in Manila, Philippines, GATR Global J. Bus. Soc. Sci. Review, 9(1): 10 – 22. https://doi.org/10.35609/gjbssr.2021.9.1(2)

Elementary Science Teachers Adapt Their Practice During a Pandemic

The COVID-19 global pandemic created new challenges for teachers and school systems as teachers were forced to rapidly transition to remote learning using new digital tools and resources. Teaching elementary science in “normal times” is challenging due to issues involving teacher preparation, limited access to materials and lack of administrative support due to emphasis on tested subjects, among others. Using reform-based, inquiry practices is challenging when teaching science face-to-face and even more so in an online environment. Compounded with issues of access and equity, teachers faced many problems with moving elementary science instruction online due to COVID-19. This study reports on the experiences of 10 early career teachers who were graduates of a specialized elementary science concentration. Teachers reflect on the challenges faced, how they adapted, and how they designed new learning contexts to teach science. Teachers report on resources they found beneficial, assess needs for the future, and explain how they worked to maintain a sense of community for their students during this unprecedented critical time.

Transforming Data into Poems: Poetic Inquiry Practices for Social and Human Sciences

This article argues that poetry is an act of meditation, improvisation and exploration, and urgency is what guides the writer into (and through) the poetic journey. In the light of this, this article illustrates the features of a workshop that was designed to guide social and human scientists in the delicate process of turning raw data into poems. One of the chief objectives of the decolonial project is to bridge the gap between Westernised academia (“The Ivory Tower”) and communities where research is conducted, and this article aims to show how poetic inquiry is a fitting research methodology that can serve this purpose. Through a description of the workshop process and specific poems that emerged from it, it suggests that poetic inquiry is an innovative and effective research methodology for social and human scientists engaged in the transformation of conventional knowledge production.

Reciprocal Learning as a Comparative Education Model and as an Exemplar of Schwab’s The Practical in Curriculum Inquiry

The field of curriculum studies has long been tormented by a disputatious literature over theory and practice and the proper way to pursue curriculum inquiry. Roughly in the middle of the last century standard practical pursuits came into question with a dizzying array of postmodern critiques. Countering both the practical pursuits under criticism and the postmodern reconceptualist critical literature, Joseph J. Schwab advanced a theory of The Practical. Schwab’s writing remains relevant, and theoretical debates on curriculum inquiry regularly reference Schwab. These debates are driven by fundamentally different philosophical views on theory and practice and their place in curriculum studies. Although the reconceptualist literature has become theoretical orthodoxy in the field of curriculum studies, the debate is kept alive by writers who draw on Schwab’s theory of The Practical. However, little progress in mutual understanding has resulted because debate is focused on theoretical parameters, assertions, and positions at the expense of the practice of inquiry. We believe that turning attention to what people do in curriculum inquiry rather than pursuing theoretic prescriptions of how people should think in curriculum studies would help move the field forward. Our “Practical” Schwab-based work in personal practical knowledge and in narrative inquiry over the years, culminating in our current large-scale, seven-year-long longitudinal comparative education study, Reciprocal Learning Partnership Research between Canada and China, is illustrative. Using a commonplaces of inquiry framework developed by Schwab, we detail practical research qualities of The Practical and of the Reciprocal Learning Partnership Project. We discuss the situational starting and end points of curriculum inquiry in the Reciprocal Learning Partnership with special reference to the moral quality of practical situations studied. We further describe the nature of qualified knowledge outcomes in inquiry, qualities of the researcher agent, method and its relationship to a flexible, shifting database, and the understanding that inquiry and situations studied are the outcomes of narrative histories. This Schwab-based comparative education work begins with a moral position on a practical international situation and builds cross-cultural reciprocal learning strategies and outcomes using diverse theoretical positions and methodologies. In so doing Schwab’s “The Practical” is demonstrated by a new model of comparative curriculum studies. There is much to criticize in this work but there is also, we believe, much in which to take pride. Canadian and Chinese educators and their practices are enhanced through reciprocal learning. Improving practice has its own theoretical, and personal, rewards apart from the security achieved by theoretical consistency pursued by The Theoretic. Our hope is that something new in the contentious arena of curriculum studies may emerge if deliberation revolved around competing curriculum inquiry practices rather than around competing theoretical ideas on the nature of curriculum inquiry. Should this hope be unrealized, we nevertheless believe that Reciprocal Learning as an exemplar of The Practical provides useful direction for comparative curriculum studies.

Filipino Instructional Leaders' Reflective Inquiry Practices In Selected Public Schools In The Division Of Manila

According to Baecher, Graves, & Ghailan (2018), the instructional leader's supervision is a pedagogical skill set that can be advanced through reflective practice similar to teacher development. Reflective inquiry engages individuals in specific investigations to resolve puzzles or troubling and problematic situations (Lyons, Halton, & Freidus, 2013). Anchored on the theories of the model of inquiry by John Dewey (1938) and reflective practice cycle by York-Barr, Sommers, Ghere, and Monthie (2016), the study aims to explore the reflective inquiry practices of the instructional leaders and determines the extent to which instructional leaders practice their reflective inquiry. The study also identifies the significant difference in the respondents' reflective inquiry practices based on their personal profile. Keywords: Instructional leaders, Reflective Inquiry, and Reflective Practice

Geneticus Investigatio: a technology-enhanced learning environment for scaffolding complex learning in genetics

Bioscientists such as geneticists and molecular biologists regularly demonstrate the integration of domain concepts and science inquiry practices/skills while explaining a natural phenomenon. The complexity of these concepts and skills becomes manifold at the tertiary undergraduate level and are known to be challenging for learners. They learn these in silos as part of theory classes, practical labs, and tutorial sessions while in an industry, they will be required to integrate and apply in a given authentic context. To support learners in this process, we have designed and developed Geneticus Investigatio (GI), a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environment for scaffolding complex learning in the context of Mendelian genetics. GI facilitates this complex learning by the integration of domain concepts and science inquiry practices through inquiry-driven reflective learning experiences, which are interspersed with inquiry-based learning steps in an authentic context along with metacognitive reflection. In this paper, we present two cycles of iterative design, development, and evaluation of GI, based on the design-based research (DBR) approach. In the first DBR cycle, we identified the pedagogical design features and learning activities of GI based on an exploratory study with bio-science instructors for facilitating complex learning. We then report a pre-post classroom study (N = 37) in which we investigated the learning and perceptions of usability and usefulness of GI. The results indicate high learning gains after interacting with GI and learner perceptions that activities in GI help learn concepts and inquiry practices along with its integration. It is followed by the identification of interaction and other difficulties by the learner, which were triangulated with different data sources. It provided insights into the pedagogical and design changes required in GI. The revised version of GI was evaluated with a quasi-experimental classroom study (N = 121). The results indicate that the drawbacks of the previous version of GI were addressed. The main contributions of this research are a pedagogical design for facilitating complex learning and its implementation in the form of GI TEL environment.