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38626 results in Cambridge Textbooks

Page 1264 of 1932

  • Part II - Ethnographic Fieldwork – The Focus On Constitution

  • Martin J. Packer, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Colombia
  • Book:
    The Science of Qualitative Research
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 151-152

  • Summary

    In the first part of this book, I have followed Thomas Kuhn&s lead and examined the common practices of qualitative research today in order to see what epistemological and ontological commitments were embedded in them. In the conduct and analysis of semistructured interviews we found the assumption that subjectivity is an inner, mental realm that contrasts and yet coexists with the objectivity of an outer world. We found subjective experience contrasted with objective knowledge. The latter is abstract and general, so that subjective kinds of knowing must be extracted from their context, their indexicality must be repaired, and commonalities must be found across individuals in order to arrive at objective statements. We also found contradictory metaphors for language. Language is a conduit. It is a repository of concepts, names for objects and events. It is a joint production.

    In the last two chapters, I started to explore a more adequate ontology and epistemology. I traced the history of hermeneutics from the aim to understand a spoken or written text by reconstructing the author&s subjectivity to the view that the meaning of a text is an event, the effect it has on a reader or listener. This event is an application of the text by the reader to their current situation.

    If we apply this to interviews, we see them as a joint production of discourse that, in its use of linguistic devices, especially tropes such as metaphor, invites a new way of seeing the world – or a new world to see. Analysis becomes a matter of examining this poesis to articulate how it works, to explicate how the discourse was skillfully designed to have various effects.

    I suggested in the introduction that qualitative researchers are not aiming high enough and are not asking sufficiently interesting questions. When it comes to the qualitative research interview, the most common way to obtain empirical material, the aim has been to describe subjective experience, ‘to understand the world from the subjects’ points of view, to unfold the meaning of people's experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanation’ (Kvale, 1996, p. 1). It has become clear that we could have been asking, should have been asking, how we learn about people when we talk to them, when we read what they have said.

  • 1.1 - Contemporary issues in teaching and learning science

  • from Part 1 - Theory
  • Edited by Geoff Woolcott, Southern Cross University, Australia, Robert Whannell, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Teaching Secondary Science
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 3-23

  • Summary

    LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

  • • discuss the diverse roles of science and science education in our society

  • • identify contemporary issues for science education

  • • reflect on the place of science within the wider curriculum.

    • Introduction

    While ostensibly examining contemporary issues in teaching and learning science, in many ways this chapter is really concerned with why we as a society require all of our children to spend so much of their early lives learning about science at school. The reasons are many and complex, and this chapter does not aim to provide a neat and satisfactory answer, but it will provide you with a greater level of insight into the ‘why’ of science education before the book departs more earnestly into matters of ‘how’.

    In search of this insight, the chapter will begin with a brief historical examination of science education and the public understanding of science. This will highlight that science education is, and always has been, about more than just teaching children some ‘stuff about science’. There is a well-known principle developed in modern architecture and industrial design that ‘form follows function’. This principle is also quite apt for describing changing approaches to the design of science education as it is evident that the form in science education, or teaching and learning practices, has indeed followed changes in the function, or goals and purposes, set for it by society.

    OPENING VIGNETTE

    A common question heard in many classrooms goes something like, ‘When will I use this when I grow up?’ Given the time and effort we expect children to put into their education, it is the sort of question that deserves an answer with greater meaning than it typically receives, such as, ‘I don't know, but it will be on the next test!’

    Finding reasons to study science is easy – science is increasingly important in our rapidly changing world, meaning that many jobs and many decisions we need to make as a society require an understanding of science; science enables us to understand, manage and shape our natural and made environments, or simply to widen our sense of wonder and curiosity about them; scientific ways of working provide a powerful way to solve problems from the personal to the global level; the list could go on.

  • Chapter 9 - Emerging issues and new frontiers

  • Louise Floyd, James Cook University, North Queensland, William Steenson, University of Technology Sydney, Amanda Coulthard, Bond University, Queensland, Daniel Williams, Anne C. Pickering, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Employment, Labour and Industrial Law in Australia
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 392-424

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Most of this book has dealt with labour and employment law insofar as it applies to Australians in Australia. There is every justification for that. Most people still work in one country or for an employer based in one country – and live their lives centred on a community.

    However, times are changing. Not infrequently, corporations operate transnationally; there are global supply chains; and an employee based in one country may transfer to an overseas office of their employer. Such developments raise numerous questions, ranging from how the law balances the power of the global corporation with that of the local worker, through to how a conflict of laws may be resolved in a particular instance. As Professor Ewing recently observed, to neglect transnational labour law is an ‘extraordinary omission, given the impact of globalisation on workers’ rights and the power of global capital. Extraordinary too, in light of the developing body of principles, rules and practices regulating transnational corporations.’

    Parallel to those changes in the basic nature of work and the law, there are further developments around the manner in which work is performed. Not infrequently, volunteers will perform important work (in sometimes dangerous places), and issues may arise as to whether there is an employment relationship there at all. Beyond that, some people are watching a world in which their very job seems to be disappearing with the advent of new technology and automation.

    Indeed, labour and employment law face many emerging issues and new frontiers – and this chapter discusses those:

  • • Issue 1: Transnational and international labour and employment law issues. As observed in Chapter 3, there has always been a tension between international trade and labour. Likewise, there has long been a study of the influence one country's laws might have on the employment laws of another. The advent of large transnational corporations and global supply chains beg questions as to how best to develop such transnational and international labour laws. Solutions may rest in corporate codes of conduct and regional trading agreements, as well as International Labour Organization (ILO) treaties and international law suits. Transnational labour law seeks to extend beyond the nation state, yet relies on nation states contributing to its development and enforcement.

  • 6 - Calls for Interpretive Social Science

  • from Part II - Ethnographic Fieldwork – The Focus On Constitution
  • Martin J. Packer, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Colombia
  • Book:
    The Science of Qualitative Research
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 153-169

  • Summary

    We cannot measure such sciences against the requirements of a science of verification: we cannot judge them by their predictive capacity. We have to accept that they are founded on intuitions which we all do not share, and what is worse that these intuitions are closely bound up with our fundamental options. These sciences cannot be wertfrei [value-free]; they are moral sciences in a more radical sense that the eighteenth century understood. Finally, their successful prosecution requires a high degree of self-knowledge, a freedom from illusion, in the sense of error which is rooted and expressed in one's way of life; for our incapacity to understand is rooted in our own self-definitions, hence in what we are.

    Taylor, 1971, p. 57

    In the 1970s, a number of calls were made for a new kind of interpretive social science that would have ethnography at its center (e.g., Bernstein, 1976; Dallmayr & McCarthy, 1977; Rabinow & Sullivan, 1979). In this chapter, I will examine three of these calls: Charles Taylor's proposal for an interpretive approach to political science, Anthony Giddens's hermeneutically informed sociology, and Clifford Geertz's interpretive anthropology. In each case, interpretation – hermeneutics – was regarded as an important, even central, element. In each case, immersion in the social practices of a community – that is to say, ethnographic fieldwork – was considered crucial (though at the same time, as we shall see later, ethnography itself was in crisis). In each case – in sociology, political science, and anthropology – it was claimed that the new approach would resolve core dualisms that had plagued the discipline. And, in each case, it was said that this would be because we would study the key relationship of constitution between humans and the world. This chapter begins our exploration of this notion of constitution, a notion that will lead us to a new way of practicing fieldwork. Once again, it will turn out to be important to get the ontology right.

    Interpretation And The Human Sciences: Charles Taylor

    Charles Taylor (b. 1931) is a Canadian philosopher who has written on the philosophy of science and on political philosophy. He emphasized the importance of “intersubjective” phenomena in the social sciences in an important article, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man” (1971).

  • Introduction

  • Martin J. Packer, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Colombia
  • Book:
    The Science of Qualitative Research
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 1-16

  • Summary

    This is an exciting time to be writing about the character of inquiry in social science for there is a growing interest in and openness to new forms of inquiry. Researchers throughout the social sciences are increasingly working with qualitative data – interview transcripts, verbal reports, videos of social interactions, drawings, and notes – whether they view these as “soft data” (Ericsson & Simon, 1984), “messy data” (Chi, 1997, p. 271), or “the ‘good stuff’ of social science” (Ryan & Bernard, 2000, p. 769). Research projects that include such empirical material are becoming increasingly popular. In addition to self-styled “qualitative researchers,” investigators in the learning sciences, developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and even in survey research, as well as many other areas, have turned to nonquantitative material and are exploring ways to collect, analyze, and draw conclusions from it.

    At the same time, a strong backlash has developed against this kind of inquiry. In the United States, as in England and Australia, the funding priorities of government agencies emphasize “evidence-based” research. We are told repeatedly that there is a “gold standard” for research in the social sciences, the randomized clinical trial. Other kinds of research – typically cast as naturalistic, observational, and descriptive – are viewed as mere dross in comparison, good only for generating hypotheses, not for testing them. They are seen as lacking the rigor necessary for truly scientific research and as failing to offer practical solutions to pressing problems. Clinical trials, in contrast, are seen as relevant because they test treatments and interventions, and as rigorous because they involve direct manipulation, objective measurement, and statistical testing of hypotheses. Any suggestion that there might be research that follows a logic of inquiry different from that of traditional experimental research is dismissed. The possibility that complex human phenomena might require a kind of investigation that traces them in time and space and explores how they are constituted is not considered.

    In the 1980s, there was general agreement that the “paradigm wars” had ended (Gage, 1989). For many, the correct way to proceed seemed to be with “mixed methods” that combined qualitative techniques with aspects of traditional experimental design and quantification. Arguments against mixing “qual” and “quant” are often dismissed as an unnecessarily belligerent perpetuation of the conflict. But now the “science wars” are being fought over much the same territory (Howe, 2005; Lather, 2004).

  • 13 - Social Science as Participant Objectification

  • from Part III - Inquiry With An Emancipatory Interest
  • Martin J. Packer, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Colombia
  • Book:
    The Science of Qualitative Research
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 398-423

  • Summary

    Bourdieu's theory of practice is a systematic attempt to move beyond a series of oppositions and antinomies which have plagued the social sciences since their inception. For anyone involved in the social sciences today, these oppositions have a familiar ring: the individual versus society, action versus structure, freedom versus necessity, etc. Bourdieu's theoretical approach is intended to bypass or dissolve a plethora of such oppositions.

    Thompson, 1991, p. 11

    A second perspective on the kind of investigation that attends to the “objective framework” in which people live can be found in the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002). For Bourdieu, we are always “playing a game” but are necessarily unaware of its arbitrary character. Everyday activity is the product of an interaction between what he called “habitus” and “social field,” a situated encounter between agents who are endowed with socially structured resources and competencies, and it is frequently the occasion for “symbolic violence” that critical inquiry must expose.

    Bourdieu emphasized that the presuppositions that Habermas insists we must examine are not matters of individual tacit knowledge. Like Kuhn, Bourdieu argues that the presuppositions are embedded in social practices and embodied in bodily habitus. Reflection will not expose them. We need to study material practices, and because scientific practices themselves are techniques of “objectification,” we need to objectify these techniques, turning them on themselves as instruments of reflexivity. Critical inquiry needs to be reflexive rather than reflective, and it achieves this by “objectifying objectification.” Reflexivity is also a matter of turning our instruments of objectification on ourselves. This means studying one's own habitus together with the field in which one acquired it (where one grew up) and the field in which one applies it (the academy).

    By being reflexive, critical inquiry can avoid objectivism, the error of claiming that one's system of categorization and classification is neutral and uniquely appropriate. It also can avoid subjectivism, the error of merely cataloging the diverse perspectives among the players of a game. The result is a viewpoint that “transcends” the “partial and partisan” point of view of a player but is not the gaze of a “divine spectator.” It becomes possible to describe the field of play so as to show how the players have different perspectives because they occupy different positions.

  • 4 - Hermeneutics and the Project for a Human Science

  • from PART I - The Objective Study of Subjectivity
  • Martin J. Packer, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Colombia
  • Book:
    The Science of Qualitative Research
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 96-112

  • Summary

    The hallmark of the “linguistic revolution” of the twentieth century, from Saussure and Wittgenstein to contemporary literary theory, is the recognition that meaning is not simply something “expressed” or “reflected” in language: it is actually produced by it.

    Eagleton, 1983, p. 60

    If we are to rethink the use of the interview as a tool in qualitative research, we must ask some fundamental questions. What does it mean to understand what someone says? What does it mean to understand a text? What is the “meaning” of a text? What is the relationship between a text and its author's subjective experience? The coding approach to analysis assumes that the answers to these questions can be found in the conduit metaphor for language. This metaphor implies that words or short phrases “represent” objects and events, that experience is “put into” words, that to understand is to “unpack” this content from the form, and that this “meaning” can be repackaged in language that avoids indexicality. We have seen how unsatisfactory these answers are.

    But these answers are not the only ones possible. These questions have been asked for hundreds of years, and a variety of answers have been proposed. For 200 years, they have been topics of scholarly debate in philosophy, literary theory, and religion, in the field known as hermeneutics. Ironically, research with qualitative materials today more closely resembles the way people thought about these matters in the 18th century than it does contemporary views. The objective study of subjectivity has much in common with what is known as “Romanticist” hermeneutics. Yet the Romanticist view of interpretation, although very influential in the 1700s and for a considerable period afterward, searched for something unreachable. It required an endless circle of interpretation, or empathic leaps of identification with an author, or the appeal to a metaphysical notion of a universal life-force unfolding towards an objective end point.

    The belief that there can be an objective science of subjectivity can be traced back to Wilhelm Dilthey, who in the 19th century made one of the earliest attempts to define a human science distinct from the natural sciences. His Geisteswissenschaften (science of the mind or soul) had the two central elements that we can see today in the standard practice of qualitative research.

  • 1.8 - Technology, electronic media and science education

  • from Part 1 - Theory
  • Edited by Geoff Woolcott, Southern Cross University, Australia, Robert Whannell, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Teaching Secondary Science
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 168-190

  • Summary

    LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

  • • describe broadly what technology is and how it shapes science and science teaching

  • • recognise the importance of technology integration into science teaching and learning

  • • distinguish between the various roles played by technologies in science learning

  • • develop an understanding of the affordances of different technologies and their applications to diverse learning environments and the various practices of a teacher.

    • Introduction

    The term technology conjures up numerous and diverse notions. For example, its broadest definition relates to the ability of humans to manipulate their environment. In this sense, technology can include activities such as writing and diverse objects such as cars, refrigerators and telephones. This broad view of technology has led, in recent decades, to the advent of technological devices (generally referred to as technology), such as digital technologies and electronic media. These technologies have allowed scientific phenomena to be understood and communicated in ways not previously possible. The development of emerging sciences, such as nanotechnologies, medical technologies and fields of research within astronomy and quantum physics, has been possible due to advances in technologies and their affordances that support scientific reasoning and communication.

    Digital technologies not only have the capacity to shape scientific knowledge and its contribution to shared human capital, but are also diverse in their capacities to influence the ways in which we teach and learn science. Teachers can harness the affordances and varied natures of a range of digital technologies to support their students’ learning of scientific concepts, to develop students’ understanding and appreciation of the Nature of Science, to enhance students’ scientific literacy, and to ensure that science learning is authentic, meaningful and exciting. This chapter begins with an outline of the nature of technology and its influence on science and science teaching. It focuses on the ways in which digital technologies can be used in and beyond the science classroom for teaching and learning science. It draws on a range of examples to highlight the opportunities that different technologies provide for teaching science and the innovative ways in which students can use diverse technologies for learning science, such as that shown in Figure 1.8.1. This photo shows a computer screen with data generated from a research boat's instruments and used by biology students in conjunction with data collected from plankton hauls, sediment grabs and underwater camera footage.

  • 16 - The Concrete Investigation of Constitution

  • from Part III - Inquiry With An Emancipatory Interest
  • Martin J. Packer, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Colombia
  • Book:
    The Science of Qualitative Research
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 481-511

  • Summary

    [T]his study asks, How is pugilistic intentionality, the “aboutness” of that particular form of skilled social action, practically constituted; what social ingredients enter into its manufacture; through what pedagogical techniques is it transmitted and validated; and what can its social genesis, inculcation, and unfolding teach us about the logic of any practice, and thereby about the vexed nexus of body, mind, and society?

    Wacquant, 2005, p. 442

    This final chapter takes the next step, offering concrete advice about how to design and conduct the kind of research that I have recommended in the preceding chapters. Like the instructions given to Eduardo Kohn, my advice may at first seem opaque. Certainly, it is not separable from the preceding chapters; it represents suggestions for how to put into practice the abstract considerations of those chapters. These suggestions cannot be successfully applied without familiarity with those considerations.

    I shall use as an illustration of the techne of this kind of research the investigation by Loïc Wacquant that I have already mentioned. Wacquant's research into the world of professional boxing, centered on a gymnasium in Chicago's South Side, offers an example of one way to align the components of qualitative research as a scientific study of the constitution of human beings.

    It is important to reiterate that qualitative research is interpretation, through and through. It is not a Romantic hermeneutics that tries to penetrate to a hidden truth, but it is the kind of hermeneutics that operates “on the surface” of phenomena, articulating what is not usually noticed because it has been taken for granted.

    We saw in Chapter 8 that interpretation is always organized by a “forestructure” (see Figure 16.1). In any research project, you will need (1) to gain access to the phenomenon you wish to study in its involvement within a whole situation (your fore-having). You will have (2) a question that arises from an interest, and this provides a perspective from which to engage the phenomenon and understand it (your fore-sight). You will also have (3) preconceptions that provide an interpretive framework (your fore-grasp). These constituents of the fore-structure organize (4) the understanding you obtain through practical involvement with the phenomenon. The character of this practical involvement takes different forms in ethnographic fieldwork, in the study of ontological work, and in interviews.

  • 2.5 - Creating a classroom for engagement with scientific thinking, problem solving and real-world contexts

  • from Part 2 - Practice
  • Edited by Geoff Woolcott, Southern Cross University, Australia, Robert Whannell, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Teaching Secondary Science
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 300-322

  • Summary

    LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

  • • improve lesson quality utilising collaborative enhancement based on current scientific knowledge and knowledge of how scientists solve problems, combined with personal and classroom students’ collective knowledge

  • • reflect collaboratively on a teaching lesson using the affect-based critical moment protocol, or other reflection strategies

  • • use an iterated structure to collaborate to improve teaching performance

  • • utilise transferable teaching skills to deliver different types of content in science lessons.

    • Introduction

    This chapter is the ‘mirror’ chapter to Chapter 1.5. It provides practical examples related to the theoretical outlines in Chapter 1.5, designed to improve competence and confidence in teaching and learning science. The first two examples in this chapter have been selected to illustrate processes of collaborative enhancement and reflection based around lesson delivery of a particular aspect of the Australian Curriculum. The second two examples illustrate how to use collaboration in iterative processes and in the development of transferable teaching skills.

    Questions

    Take 10 minutes to consider the following questions related to how this pre-service teacher is using scientific thinking, everyday thinking and problem solving in her classroom. Write in your own words how you might relate the following questions to your classroom teaching.

    1 How is the pre-service teacher using problem solving in her introduction to this lesson?

    2 It is the period after lunch on a hot Friday afternoon. How is she engaging her students?

    3 How is she encouraging students to see science as part of everyday life?

    4 What are some other ideas that you could use to engage this group of students? How would you try to find out what their interests are?

    5 What benefit do you think this pre-service teacher obtained from collaborative enhancement and reflection?

    Collaborative enhancement in practice

    In Chapter 1.5 the term collaborative enhancement was used to refer to collaborations that can be organised and utilised to improve science teaching through enhancement of knowledge about science and how this can be used in the classroom. In this chapter, we show you how this can be done and illustrate some of the experiences that pre-service teachers have had in working with real-world scientists or people who have scientific expertise.

  • Chapter 3 - Introduction to the Fair Work Act

  • Louise Floyd, James Cook University, North Queensland, William Steenson, University of Technology Sydney, Amanda Coulthard, Bond University, Queensland, Daniel Williams, Anne C. Pickering, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Employment, Labour and Industrial Law in Australia
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 71-96

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The opening chapters of this book outlined the basics of the contract of employment – offer and acceptance are required, as are consideration and certainty of terms. Characterising a contract as being one of either employment (contract of service) or a contract for services (independent contractor) is important. The law has ‘special protections’ aimed at preventing the misuse of the independent contractor relationship (in other words, stopping one party engaging others in such a way as to avoid paying the entitlements that the law stipulates for employees). Further, the common law implies various duties into the employment contract – to some extent there is still debate in Australia on the nature and scope of those duties and the protections they deliver.

    Some authors, such as US law professor Stewart Schwab, would argue that the contract of employment is no different from most other contracts and it is not necessary for there to be a sophisticated body of law tailored to governing an employment contract or workplace rela- tionship. However, although the extent of regulation varies from country to country (and the US is at the less interventionist end of the regulatory spectrum), many acknowledge the special nature of the contract of employment: for many, a job is crucial to their identity and is their means of buying food and shelter; being exploited at work can have negative impacts on their health, and depending on the worker's skill set and the economic circumstances of the day, a different job may be difficult to find. And finally, the productivity of the workplace affects society as a whole.

    Debates on legal theory, together with the historical and social settings of Australia, have produced the labour and employment law that we have today. That law draws from both common law and statute; it finds a central place for organised labour and a strong national regulator, yet also aspires to promote flexibility and productivity. It is complex and extensive in nature, and in the last twenty or thirty years has seen enormous change. Our system is unique, though it draws on international concepts. It is largely nationally driven, yet has a history of innovation at the State government level.

  • 2.9 - Bringing Australia's diversity into science education

  • from Part 2 - Practice
  • Edited by Geoff Woolcott, Southern Cross University, Australia, Robert Whannell, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Teaching Secondary Science
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 394-415

  • Summary

    LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

  • • describe the importance of differentiation in science education

  • • understand how practical approaches to cultural differences can foster students’ different ways of knowing science

  • • recognise the role of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in developing practical approaches to inclusion of disability in science education

  • • explain how families and communities of students of differing socioeconomic statuses can provide quality practical approaches to science learning and teaching

  • • develop practical science learning opportunities for students living in different geographic localities.

    • Introduction

    This chapter is the ‘mirror’ chapter to Chapter 1.9. It provides practical examples related to the theoretical outlines in Chapter 1.9 with a focus on the four different categories of diversity outlined in Chapter 1.9, diversity in cultural background, disability, socioeconomic status and geographic location. Bearing in mind, of course, that students may have diverse needs that cross over more than one of these areas. It is important to note that in a classroom environment every single student has a diverse range of needs.

    The ways in which the diverse needs of students can be catered for when teaching science include:

  • • utilising pedagogies and strategies that enhance science learning, such as the 5Es mode of inquiry (see Chapter 1.3 and Chapter 2.3)

  • • hands-on investigations

  • • problem-based learning

  • • ensuring science lessons are relevant and contextual.

    • Hands-on investigations that allow for students from family backgrounds with low science education or careers in science need to be structured to enhance and support students. Support needs to be provided in the science classroom, such as resources, structure and scaffolding. Group work is another way that students with low confidence or prior experiences with science can learn from one another and increase confidence.

    Problem-based learning requires researching, experimenting and testing solutions to a problem. Using relevant and contextual real problems can increase the confidence of your students to get involved in scientific investigations. You will need to use diagnostic tools to determine your student's prior experiences and background each time you begin a new topic or unit of work. Including parents and the local community can assist in creating meaningful, relevant and contextual learning experiences.

    We all learn differently and there are a number of different ways of learning that need to be catered for within the one classroom.

  • 9 - The Crisis in Ethnography

  • from Part II - Ethnographic Fieldwork – The Focus On Constitution
  • Martin J. Packer, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Colombia
  • Book:
    The Science of Qualitative Research
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 267-318

  • Summary

    Ethnography has, perhaps, never been so popular within the social sciences. At the same time, its rationales have never been more subject to critical scrutiny and revision.

    Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994, p. 249

    We can now return to those calls in the 1970s for a new approach to research in the social sciences, one that would escape dualism by adopting an ethnographic mode of investigation through “immersion” in a foreign form of life. We can see now that this approach has promise to the extent that it recognizes that practical activity operates prior to the separation of subject and object, of subjectivity and objectivity. The logic seems clear: if embodied practical activity is the locus of a constitution of both social order and the knowing subject, we need to study this activity in specific settings. The researcher ought to acquire a practical familiarity with the people and way of life being studied, and this can come only from participating in this way of life. Ethnographic fieldwork ought to be the way to go.

    But over the past 20 years, cultural anthropologists have been debating and rethinking the character of ethnography, and right now there is little consensus about ethnographic investigation. The basic premise of anthropological ethnography has been that one lives among the people one wants to know, participates in their practices, observes what they do, and writes a summary report. But there are significant problems with this conception of ethnography, and these problems have led to a reexamination in cultural anthropology of the character of ethnographic fieldwork. In this chapter I will review this debate and see what conclusions we can draw about how ethnographic fieldwork should be conducted if it is to help us study constitution in a program of relevant qualitative research.

    The central importance of ethnography comes from the recognition that our planet contains a rich variety of human forms of life and the conviction that to understand them one has to witness them firsthand “actually taking part in the activity together with the people involved in it” (Winch, 1956, p. 31; see Winch, 1958):

    One of the chief tasks of the social scientist who wishes to understand a particular form of human activity in a given society will be … to understand the concepts involved in that activity.

  • 2.2 - Building identity and commitment to the teaching of science

  • from Part 2 - Practice
  • Edited by Geoff Woolcott, Southern Cross University, Australia, Robert Whannell, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Teaching Secondary Science
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 236-258

  • Summary

    LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

  • • describe and apply your own personal life story and the relationship this has to your understanding of identity and your role as a science educator

  • • describe your personal view of your role as a science educator

  • • identify the importance of identity and role of the teacher and student in the process of science education

  • • develop lesson sequences that include techniques and strategies that support the development of an academic identity for students that will enhance their outcomes.

    • Introduction

    This chapter is the ‘mirror’ to Chapter 1.2. In Chapter 1.2 you considered some of the thinking and theory that explained the process of how your identity as a teacher of science develops over time. You were introduced to a number of aspects involved in the process, including identity as a psychological construct, the role, or behaviours that we associate with each of our identities, the importance of the emotional experience of teaching science and how these emotions influence all aspects of the identity-building process. We also highlighted the importance of support from other people. In this chapter we will look at several specific strategies that you might use throughout your teaching career that will allow you to take personal control of your own identity-building process, to ensure that you become the teacher that you want to be. You will commence with a consideration of how your own personal life story has contributed to who you consider yourself to be as a science educator. The importance of aesthetic experiences in teaching will then be examined and will include techniques that will assist you in understanding your experiences. The chapter concludes with a description of a number of techniques that might be used to assist you in developing the academic identity of students.

    OPENING VIGNETTE

    Consider the story below where an early career science teacher has been required to teach out-of-field in mathematics, an experience that nearly all teachers of science at the secondary level will be faced with, particularly during their early career. Pauline reflects on how she struggled to use a ‘storied’ teaching approach from her science teaching into maths:

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