Predictive Validity of Teaching Efficacy Beliefs on Teaching-Learning Conceptions: A Study of Physical Education Teacher Candidates

This study aimed to determine the relationship between the teaching efficacy of physical education teacher candidates and their teaching-learning conceptions and to determine the validity of the level of teaching efficacy predicting teaching-learning conceptions. The study group consisted of 433 teacher candidates studying in physical education and sport teaching departments. The study revealed that teacher candidates’ teaching efficacy levels and their adoption of constructivist conceptions were high and that teacher efficacy levels were important predictors of teaching-learning conceptions.

Inquiry-Based Science Education: Analysis of Didactic Conceptions of Primary School Teachers in Costa Rica Based on a Complexity Model

This article analyzes didactic conceptions of primary school teachers regarding inquiry and establishes evolutionary complexity profiles according to three dimensions which comprise the technical, practical and critical complexity hypothesis. The perspective of four advisors and twelve teachers was analyzed through narratives based on an emerging narrative design (prepared by the advisors) and an open questionnaire (answered by the teachers). The results suggest a transmissive didactic model baseline for four of the teachers, a traditional didactic model and eight of the teachers in three intermediate levels with constructivist conceptions closer to an alternative model. However, none of the teachers were close to proposed complexity model baseline. The transition from an intermediary level to a reference level can be supported by initial and continuous teacher education.

Wiedza osobista uczniów jako punkt zwrotny w teorii i praktyce dydaktycznej

The article presents the students’ personal knowledge as a crucial element of the learning and teaching process. The discovery of personal knowledge by psychologists caused a paradigmatic turn in the theory of teaching. While the conceptions inspired by behaviourism do not take into consideration the personal knowledge and notice/see only the public knowledge assigned by the formal curriculum and textbooks, the constructivist conceptions place personal knowledge very high among the factors significant for the learning process. However, its status is still controversial as far as we treat it not only as a starting point for learning but as a final point determining personalisation of new knowledge as well. To explain this mechanism, the author uses the notions of „a mental gentling of the public knowledge” and „a cognitive partnership”.

A Typology of the Evaluation of Qualitative Research

This chapter explores five specific categories of the evaluation of qualitative research (EQR): (1) a general EQR category for a universal set of criteria for any type of qualitative research; (2) a “subtle realist” category that does not necessarily give up on positivist aims while drawing on the insights of constructivist conceptions of social research; (3) a post-criteriology category that views as an impossibility setting up predetermined criteria for qualitative research that uncovers complex meaning-making processes; (4) an art-based research category that consists of six criteria—incisiveness, concision, coherence, generativity, social significance, and evocation and illumination—that serve as a cue for perception that assists audiences in making a better evaluation of an art product; and (5) a post-validity category seeking out openly ideological evaluation criteria. The author’s holistic view of EQR, underpinning a beehive metaphor, is presented as neither unitary nor paradigm-idiosyncratic.

Marxism and the Dialectics of Ecology

The recovery of the ecological-materialist foundations of Karl Marx's thought, as embodied in his theory of metabolic rift, is redefining both Marxism and ecology in our time, reintegrating the critique of capital with critical natural science. This may seem astonishing to those who were reared on the view that Marx's ideas were simply a synthesis of German idealism, French utopian socialism, and British political economy.… The rediscovery of Marx's metabolism and ecological value-form theories, and of their role in the analysis of ecological crises, has generated sharply discordant trends. Despite their importance in the development of both Marxism and ecology, neither idea is without its critics. One manifestation of the divergence on the left in this respect has been an attempt to appropriate aspects of Marx's social-metabolism analysis in order to promote a crude social "monist" view based on such notions as the social "production of nature" and capitalism's "singular metabolism." Such perspectives, though influenced by Marxism, rely on idealist, postmodernist, and hyper-social-constructivist conceptions, which go against any meaningful historical-materialist ecology and tend to downplay (or to dismiss as apocalyptic or catastrophist) all ecological crises—insofar as they are not reducible to the narrow law of value of the system.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

BEING KIKUYU IN MERU: CHALLENGING THE TRIBAL GEOGRAPHY OF COLONIAL KENYA

ABSTRACTFaced with a confusing range of fluid ethnicities when they conquered Kenya, colonial officials sought to shift conquered populations into manageable administrative units. In linking physical space to ethnic identity, the Kenyan reserve system assumed that each of these ‘tribes’ had a specific homeland. Yet the reserves in the central Kenyan highlands soon became overcrowded and socially restive because they could not accommodate population growth and private claims to land for commercial agriculture. Although colonial officials proclaimed themselves the guardians of backward tribal peoples, they tried to address this problem by creating mechanisms whereby surplus populations would be ‘adopted’ into tribes living in less crowded reserves. This article provides new insights into the nature of identity in colonial Kenya by telling the stories of two types of Kikuyu migrants who settled in the Meru Reserve. The first much larger group did so legally by agreeing to become Meru. The second openly challenged the colonial state and their Meru hosts by defiantly proclaiming themselves to be Kikuyu. These diverse ways of being Kikuyu in the Meru Reserve fit neither strict primordial nor constructivist conceptions of African identity formation. The peoples of colonial Kenya had options in deciding how to identify themselves and could assume different political and social roles by invoking one or more of them at a time and in specific circumstances.

Developing and Applying a Critical and Transformative Model to Address ESD in Teacher Education

Developing and Applying a Critical and Transformative Model to Address ESD in Teacher EducationA reflective case study approach, including focus interviews, reflective/reflexive journals and analysis of project-based works of 30 pre-service teachers participating in an undergraduate course was employed to investigate the discrepancy between the teachers' constructivist conceptions and the actual practice. The identified discrepancy seemed to be an outcome of the difficulty translating constructivism into teaching practice, but also of the misleading conception of constructivism as a homogeneous philosophy. Through reflective practice, participants were able to deconstruct and reconstruct their theories and practices of teaching in more emancipatory ways addressing issues of education for sustainable development (ESD). This case study helped understand the nature of change process towards teaching and learning for more sustainable futures.

Integrating Institutions

Three central goals motivate this introductory essay and the articles that follow. First, we seek better understanding of the EU's own institutions, especially to the extent that they play a role in or represent the process of integration. Second, we seek better integration of the multiple general understandings of institutions and primarily of rationalist and constructivist conceptions. Third and most important, we seek to promote the integration of institutional research. Our overarching argument is that metatheoretical debate about institutions has run its course and must now give way to theoretical, methodological, and carefully structured empirical dialogue. To this end, we offer specific strategies for promoting greater synthesis among competing institutional schools.