ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Teaching Controversial Topics in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Ireland: Using Structured Academic Controversy to Develop Multi-Perspectivity in the Learner
Author: Bruen, Jennifer
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Controversial Issues (Course Content),Humanities,Social Sciences,Perspective Taking,College Faculty,Undergraduate Study,Constructivism (Learning),Teaching Methods,Questionnaires,Persuasive Discourse,Debate,Intervention,Educational Benefits,Class Size,Teaching Load,Qualitative Research

Purpose: This study had two main objectives: The first was to explore the extent to which a group of University lecturers feel that they are prepared to deal with controversial issues in their classrooms. The second was to elicit their views on a didactic approach known as Structured Academic Controversy (SAC). SAC is a constructivist teaching strategy intended to aid the learner in developing their views on controversial issues and in understanding alternative views with the ultimate aim of locating a compromise position. Method: A qualitative intervention was designed to introduce six university academics from diverse specialisms to SAC by way of reflective engagement with it in the role of learners. Findings: The participants in this study deal with controversial issues frequently and several feel ill-prepared to do so. They identified several challenges associated with the use of SAC. These relate primarily to class size and curricular overload. However, despite the challenges, the participants all recognized the potential value of such approaches in developing multi-perspectivity, critical thinking, listening and negotiating skills in the learner. Future larger-scale, longitudinal studies in a variety of cultural contexts are needed to develop approaches which can facilitate those approaching controversial issues in their classrooms.
Unintended Revelations in History Textbooks: The Precarious Authenticity and Historical Continuity of the Slovak Nation
Author: Šulíková, Jana
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,History Instruction,Textbooks,Ethnocentrism,Misconceptions,Nationalism,Case Studies,Secondary Education,Social Sciences,Constructivism (Learning)

Purpose: This article proposes an analytical framework that helps to identify and challenge misconceptions of ethnocentrism found in pre-tertiary teaching resources for history and the social sciences in numerous countries. Design: Drawing on nationalism studies, the analytical framework employs ideas known under the umbrella terms of primordialism, constructivism and ethno-symbolism. In applying it, the conceptualisation of the Slovak nation, as presented in the history textbooks currently used in lower secondary schools in Slovakia, is examined as a case study. Findings: A conceptually inconsistent picture emerges from the findings, displaying prevailing patterns of primordialism and a degree of ethno-symbolism. Nevertheless, the article concludes that history textbooks lend, on a number of occasions, unintended support to constructivism. Hence, both this inconsistency in theoretical approach, and frequent use of problematic assumptions based on primordialism and ethno-symbolism show that the attempts of textbooks' authors to demonstrate the authenticity and historical continuity of the Slovak nation remain precarious. Research implications: The analytical framework used in this article is well-suited for multi-country examinations of national narratives in curricula and textbooks of history and the social sciences. Practical implications: Teaching materials and pedagogic approaches drawing on constructivism could enhance critical engagement with ethnocentrism in Slovakia and beyond.
The Need of Education in Respect for Animals (ERA) as a Subject of the Social Education Degree at the University: An Overview Focused on Spain
Author: Barona, Eduardo
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Animals,Consciousness Raising,Values,Higher Education,Curriculum,Foreign Countries,Ethics,Social Sciences

Purpose: This article highlights serious educational gaps related with the respect for animals. We propose to include a new independent subject, named Education in Respect for Animals (ERA), within the curriculum of the Social Education Degree at the university level. Method: This study is based on previous educative experiences and a review of various innovative initiatives. This article is a part of critical pedagogy, aiming to contribute to the social education curriculum. It incorporates the need for a post-humanist education in the way that Haraway named &quot;posthumanist landscapes&quot;, i.e., an inclusive education for this more-than-human world (Taylor, 2013). Findings: The first part of this article reviews the theories of authors who have contributed to this area. Nonetheless the direction of this article is not to be framed in moral philosophy but a curriculum theory. Next we will contextualize and analyse the case of ERA in the Spanish educational system, concluding with proposals applied to social nets, university communities and open to educators and especially feedback from social education.
&quot;Mobilising for the Values of the Republic&quot;- France's Education Policy Response to the &quot;Fragmented Society&quot;: A Commented Press Review
Author: Busch, Matthias
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Public Policy,Educational Policy,Civics,Relevance (Education),Values Education,Terrorism,Current Events,Literature Reviews,Political Science,Citizenship Education,Secondary Education,Public Opinion,Social Differences,Democratic Values,Moral Development,Program Implementation,Program Evaluation,Federal Programs,Ethical Instruction

Purpose: This article focuses on recent developments in the domain of civic education in the French education system, the new programme on &quot;Enseignement moral et civique&quot; (EMC), and the debate about the relevance of the basic values of the Republic which came up after the terror attacks in January 2015. Method: The study is based on a press review which provides a contrastive choice of exemplary texts from different perspectives (e.g. educational policy documents, scientific and journalistic articles, interviews, statements of teachers and experts) collected between January 2015 and March 2016. Findings: The contribution examines public reflections on the design and implementation of the programme and gives an overview of the aims, content and methods of the new initiative to teach values in schools.
Teacher Educators' Views on Inclusive Education and Teacher Preparation in Ghana
Author: Nketsia, William
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Education Programs,Teacher Role,Teacher Education,Teacher Attitudes,Schools of Education,Inclusion,Program Implementation,Special Education,Special Education Teachers,Foreign Countries,Preservice Teachers,Questionnaires,Statistical Analysis,Likert Scales,Teacher Educators,Teacher Educator Education

The crucial role of initial teacher education programmes and teacher educators in preparing effective inclusive practitioners has been universally acknowledged. This study explored the attitudes of 125 teacher educators from four colleges of education towards inclusive education, their views and concerns about teacher preparation and the implementation of inclusive education in Ghana. The study found positive attitudes and considerable support for inclusive education. However, the majority of teacher educators were of the view that Ghana was inadequately prepared for the implementation of inclusive education. Their reasons and concerns were generally found to include: inadequate teacher preparation, unpreparedness of teacher educators, inadequate emphasis on inclusive instructional strategies and lack of teaching and learning materials. The implications of these findings for future reforms of inclusive teacher education were discussed.
Establishing Equity and Quality: The Experience of Schooling from the Perspective of a Student with Vision Impairment
Author: Southcott, Jane
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Visual Impairments,Student Experience,Educational Experience,Phenomenology,Student Attitudes,Equal Education,Educational Quality,Semi Structured Interviews,High School Seniors,Visually Impaired Mobility,Classroom Environment,Assistive Technology,Foreign Countries

A single participant phenomenological study using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis can give voice to a student with vision impairment, exploring and developing our understanding of the experience of schooling. This article focuses on the school experience of a senior school student with vision impairment. Few studies have looked at school experiences from a student's perspective although the belief is that through research focussing on listening to students with disabilities, their perspectives will become part of the solution to provide equity and quality in education. This study revealed a number of themes requiring further investigation and action before equity and quality can be achieved. Subject specific classroom issues, technology and mobility were major factors impacting on the student's academic achievement. Social issues were also found to have a profound effect.
Universal Design for Learning as a Bridge to Inclusion: A Qualitative Report of Student Voices
Author: Katz, Jennifer
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Inclusion,Qualitative Research,Access to Education,Student Attitudes,Educational Innovation,Student Diversity,Models,Cooperative Learning,Learning Processes,Self Concept,Classroom Environment,Well Being,Program Effectiveness,Interviews,Early Childhood Education,Elementary Secondary Education,Barriers,Emotional Development,Social Development,Educational Attitudes,Foreign Countries,Intervention

Innovations in pedagogy are, at their core, aimed at improving the educational experiences and outcomes of learners. Being as many countries are embracing a philosophy of inclusive education, designers of educational reform must be mindful of the effects of any proposed innovations on the experiences and outcomes of a broad range of diverse learners including ethnically and linguistically diverse students, students from indigenous backgrounds, and students with and without disabilities. The current project sought to contribute to the literature on the learner effects of a new pedagogy called the Three-Block Model of Universal of Design for Learning. This model is aimed at meeting the needs of diverse learners in a common setting. Specifically, we examine the effects of the model on diverse students' conceptions of learning, processes of learning, interdependence in learning, academic self-concept, and school engagement and report through the student voices on the benefits and challenges of this pedagogy.
Investigating Pedagogical Content Knowledge-in-Action
Author: Taylan, Rukiye Didem
Date: 2016-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Pedagogical Content Knowledge,Mathematics Instruction,Mathematics Education,Mathematics Teachers,Fractions,Teaching Methods,College School Cooperation,Partnerships in Education,Grade 5,Elementary School Mathematics,Interaction,Video Technology,Educational Strategies,Professional Development,Foreign Countries,Mathematics Curriculum,Misconceptions

This article investigates the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of a teacher educator who teaches 5th-grade mathematics in a school in the context of a university-school partnership project. PCK is analyzed in a qualitative way through video-taped classroom episodes with focus on interactions between the teacher and the students as well as the teacher's reflections and pedagogical reasoning on the interactions. The analyses indicate examples of PCK development during teaching, especially refinement in the domain of knowledge of instructional strategies and representations. This knowledge improved as a result of reflection on student questioning and analysis of students' misconceptions. Different roles of being teacher, teacher educator, and researcher afforded opportunities to gain insights on how to develop knowledge required for teaching and analyze it in order to facilitate future teachers' learning.
The Didactical Contract Surrounding CAS When Changing Teachers in the Classroom
Author: Jankvist, Uffe Thomas
Date: 2016-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Algebra,Mathematics,Mathematics Education,Mathematics Instruction,Mathematics Teachers,Mathematics Skills,Foreign Countries,Secondary School Mathematics,Mathematical Formulas,Mathematical Concepts,Observation

The article discusses three empirical examples of Computer Algebra System (CAS) use in a Danish upper secondary school mathematics class that had experienced a recent change of teacher. All examples lead to didactical problems surrounding the situation and unclear expectations between teacher and students, involving loss of students' mathematical skills and confidence, loss of global mathematical perspective, and the students losing sight of the mathematical objects in question. The article is the result of collaboration between two mathematics education researchers and an upper secondary school mathematics teacher, who experienced severe difficulties when taking over a class from another teacher. CAS was experienced as a crucial part of and reason for these difficulties. As a means for investigating the potential reasons behind the difficulties, a selection of constructs from the Theory of Didactical Situations (TDS) is applied. In particular, it is observed that unclear contractual relations about the role of CAS bring with them misguided winning strategies and metacognitive shifts, eventually causing the students to &quot;lose the game&quot;.
The Beutelsbach Consensus
Author: Reinhardt, Sibylle
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Controversial Issues (Course Content),Civics,Educational History,Politics of Education,Political Attitudes,Teacher Role,Bias,Student Centered Learning

In 2016 an important anniversary is coming up for &quot;The Beutelsbach consensus&quot;. It will have its 40th birthday. This consensus is of vital significance for the German dispute and discussion on teaching civics. &quot;The Beutelsbach consensus&quot; contains, and describes three points: (1) Prohibition against overwhelming the student. It is not permissible to catch students off-guard, by whatever means, for the sake of imparting desirable opinions, thereby hindering them from &quot;forming an independent judgment&quot;; (2) Matters which are controversial in scholarship and political affairs should also be presented as controversial in the classroom; and (3) Students should be put in a position to analyze a political situation and their own personal interests as well as to seek ways to have an effect on given political realities in view of these interests. The author comments on how &quot;The Beutelsbach Consensus&quot; was generated and how important it is.
&quot;...Not Simply Say That They Are All Nazis.&quot; Controversy in Discussions of Current Topics in German Civics Classes
Author: Jahr, David
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Civics,Teaching Methods,History,Foreign Countries,Controversial Issues (Course Content),Discussion (Teaching Technique),Comparative Analysis,Qualitative Research,Educational Research,Case Studies,Terrorism,Political Attitudes,News Reporting,Stranger Reactions,Islam

Studies have shown that the Requirement of Controversy defined in the German Beutelsbach Consensus is repeatedly violated in the practice of teaching Civic Education. However, little is known about the impact that different teaching settings have on the quality of controversy in the classroom. In this article, two scenes of classroom discussions that deal with current topics are analysed and compared by using reconstructive research methods: the &quot;Numbers of the Day&quot; [&quot;Zahlen des Tages&quot;] as a teacher-centred classroom discussion and the &quot;Weekly Newsreel&quot; [&quot;Wochenschau&quot;] as a student-led classroom discussion. We could reconstruct an active prevention of controversy in the &quot;Numbers of the Day&quot;. In contrary, the discussion in the &quot;Weekly Newsreel&quot; is developing in a modus of disagreement. By analysing the discussion with the documentary method, we show that this controversy is based on homogeneous (and so noncontroversial) shared orientations among the students. This leads to the result that the foreground of a discussion should be distinguished from its background of milieu-based orientations. This outcome raises new questions regarding controversy in Civic Education classrooms.
Turkish Social Studies Teachers' Thoughts about the Teaching of Controversial Issues
Author: Copur, Ahmet
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Social Studies,Teacher Attitudes,Teachers,Classroom Environment,Controversial Issues (Course Content),Mixed Methods Research,Academic Achievement,Questionnaires,Public Schools,Semi Structured Interviews,Elementary Secondary Education

In today's world, one of the primary goals of education is to raise individuals as citizens equipped with the skills of communication, high-level thinking, problem solving and questioning as well as with a global viewpoint. Introducing controversial issues into the classroom environment may be among the steps to be taken to achieve these goals. In this context, this study has the primary goal of revealing Social Studies teachers' thoughts about the teaching of controversial issues in the classroom environment. This study adopted mixed methods. The study participants consisted of Social Studies teachers working in Bursa, which is a large-scale province of Turkey, in the 2014-2015 school year. According to the study findings, while terror was the most controversial issue, faith in creation was the least controversial issue. In addition, teachers mainly preferred to introduce issues related to the Social Studies curriculum and that were appropriate for the students' preparedness. However, another result is that controversial issues contributed to students' acquisition of personal critical skills such as high-level thinking and communication. It was also observed that the teaching of controversial issues was related to the Social Studies lesson and was important for the achievement of the goals of the lesson.
Report on the Present Trainer Training Course of the Pestalozzi Programme (Council of Europe) &quot;Evaluation of Transversal Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge&quot; (Module A)
Author: Gebauer, Bernt
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Training,Democracy,Democratic Values,Civil Rights,Attitudes,Skills,Blended Learning,Cooperative Learning,Inservice Teacher Education,Social Sciences

In July 2015, the Pestalozzi Programme of the Council of Europe launched a 15-month trainer training course on the &quot;Evaluation of transversal attitudes, skills and knowledge.&quot; The tradition of offering trainer training courses that relate to the Council of Europe's core values of human rights, democracy and rule of law has been well established since 2007, including topics such as Education for Democratic Citizenship, Intercultural Education, Image of the Other in History Teaching or Collaborative Learning. Key to this course (with its corresponding publication &quot;TASKs for democracy&quot; with 60 activities to learn and assess transversal attitudes, skills and knowledge) is the question of how democratic values, democratic attitudes, and democratic beliefs interact and what that means for the planning and implementation of educational activities. This planning process is completed in teams and thus in itself reflects the philosophy of the trainer training course, which includes two face-to-face meetings (module A and module B) and online collaboration before, between, and after the meetings, making this a blended learning approach. In the author's view, student teachers at universities all over Europe should be confronted with this holistic approach of training in an early, but hopefully influential stage of their professional careers.
Teaching Rhetoric Today: Ancient Exercises for Contemporary Citizens
Author: Dainville, Julie
Date: 2016-10-23
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Rhetoric,Teaching Methods,Experimental Curriculum,Writing (Composition),Writing Exercises,Persuasive Discourse,Rhetorical Invention,Art Education,Relevance (Education),Classroom Techniques,Secondary School Curriculum,Foreign Countries

Since July 2013, our research team has been working on a project that aims at re-introducing rhetorical exercises in Belgian secondary (high) schools and at studying their effects on the pupils. Our hypothesis is that the regular practice of rhetorical exercises, inspired by those practised in Antiquity, could stimulate skills like open-mindedness, flexibility, creativity, empathy, tolerance, and proudness, in a multicultural context. The experimental course is based on the principle of the &quot;dissoi logoi&quot; (twofold arguments), an exercise probably invented by the first Sophists, in order to suspend personal opinion during the exercise and to focus on technique and performance. The results of the experiments are very encouraging. After a couple of lessons the pupils were able to apply rhetorical notions in their compositions; they developed richer argumentations, by taking other points of view into account, and skills that, according to the teachers, improve their everyday life at school.
Towards Deeper Comprehension in Higher Engineering Education: &quot;Method of Cornerstones&quot;
Author: Korpela, Aki
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Engineering Education,Engineering,Higher Education,Case Studies,Teaching Methods,Comprehension,Foreign Countries

During the current millennium, universities have faced a new kind of problem: there is not enough higher learning in higher education. Driving forces have mainly been economical, since financial pressure and effort for increasing efficiency have given rise to growing amount of accessed and graduated students. In addition, a pressure for accelerated graduation has driven universities to decrease the emphasis on thorough learning of fundamentals. Consequently, during recent decades so called immediate skills have gained excessive role in comparison with long- term skills in engineering education. This is problematic, since the roots of higher learning in engineering are closely related to the sovereign understanding of fundamentals. In our previous paper, we suggested a method to promote higher learning in engineering education, and now we concretise those ideas through a simple case study of electrical engineering. In our example we demonstrate how the cornerstones of modelling are utilised to clarify and to deepen the learning of simplest circuit analysis cases of electrical engineering. However, since the models of natural sciences tend to have a hierarchical structure, method of cornerstones can be applied to many fields of engineering. Recently, a study carried out at MIT ended up to call for "coherent and interconnected curriculum structure" to achieve excellence in engineering education. We suggest that by utilising the hierarchical structure of natural sciences in engineering education, such a coherent and interconnected structure can be created. In this paper, we present how method of cornerstones can be used to build such a structure. [For prior paper: &quot;Towards Deeper Comprehension in Higher Engineering Education: Rethinking &quot;In Theory Yes, but Not in Practice&quot;&quot;, see: EJ1107885.]