The study circle is a “free and voluntary” pedagogy that has become a mass phenomenon in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. It was initiated within the popular movements in the first years of the 1900s as a tool for education among their members. Around 10 adults typically meet a few hours a week to develop their interests, for example, in art, political topics, music, or foreign language. The “study circle grammar” includes voluntary participation, an extremely wide span of topics to be studied, no requirements of a teacher, and no entrance qualifications, grades, or exams. Tradition stresses deliberations among participants, but practical topics often have a workshop pedagogy. They have received subsidies from the state and from municipalities through various organizational structures depending on country since the early 1900s. They grew and spread fast, reaching a peak in participation in the late 1900s, but have since stagnated; however, a substantial share of adults in Nordic countries continue to engage in them.
41-50 of 1,211 Results
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Study Circles
Staffan Larsson
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Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) for Student Well-Being
Karen Moran Jackson and Rosemary Papa
The use of artificial intelligence in education (AIED) is a growing concern for both its potential benefits and misuses. Originating in research following the Second World War, artificial intelligence (AI) refers to technology that perform activities, such as making predictions and generating text, at levels equivalent to human ability. Early AI efforts had little public applications, but that began to change in the late 20th century, with applications in education becoming common in the early 21st century. AI is dependent on data collection and model selection, technical aspects of development that allow for personalized data but that also permit human biases into the system. AIED applications have taken largely predictive and decision-making roles, but generative applications are becoming more common. How different types of AIED applications become integrated into educational systems will depend not just on student and teacher needs, but on larger stakeholders in educational systems, such as administrators, policymakers, and business interests. AIED applications are subject to ethical violations and concerns, so development and implementation must be guided by ethical principles, even as ethical governance of AI in schools is riddled with challenges. Implications for educational organizations include developing more robust frameworks and principles around data access and generative AIED challenges, similar to those surrounding personalized medicine. These frameworks can guide oversight, auditing, and analysis of the performance of AIED applications, including miscues and mistakes. Educators should strive to implement AIED that is human-centered and based on principles of transparency, explainability, trustworthiness, accountability, fairness, and justice.
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Biliteracy Development in a Dynamic and Changing World
Iliana Reyes
In many communities around the world, speakers learn and speak more than one or two languages, so multilingualism and multiliteracy are habits and ways to communicate. In fact, it is well documented now that bilingualism and multilingualism are wider practices than any kind of monolingualism that might exist and that might be predominant in a particular country. Consequently, the world is becoming increasingly aware of the value of multiculturalism as part of a knowledgeable society.
Studies in both schools and communities continuously support the theory that bilinguals learning two languages simultaneously have the potential to develop literacy in two languages when this is supported in their environment and when given access to opportunities to read and write within relevant biliteracy experiences. These opportunities are provided when linguistic and cultural resources are part of day-to-day interactions, and emergent bilinguals, who develop two languages from a young age, take part in them.
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Critical Digital Pedagogy in the Platform Society
Earl Aguilera and Christina Salazar
The term “critical digital pedagogy” has been used to describe a broad range of approaches to teaching and learning rooted in critical theory, digital cultural studies, and the liberatory education promoted within schools of critical pedagogy since the 1960s. References to critical digital pedagogy began to appear in published scholarly literature in the early 2000s as a response to the expansion of neoliberal ideologies and policies in an age of proliferating digital and networked technologies. These shifts in technological, economic, and social organization have since become collectively described as the “platformization” of society, driven by processes such as datafication, commodification, and algorithmic selection. In response to concerns about the neoliberalization, dehumanization, and platformization of education specifically, the emergent field of critical digital pedagogy has coalesced into a community of educators, designers, and theorists with an international scope, though the majority of published scholarship originates from the United States and the European Union. While the approaches and methods that the proponents of critical digital pedagogy engage with are varied, three broad families of practice include critical instructional design, humanizing online teaching and learning, and digital ungrading. Following earlier traditions of critical pedagogy, practitioners in the field of critical digital pedagogy find themselves grappling with critiques of their approaches as overly politicized, ideologically driven, and pragmatically limited. Open issues in the field include the expanding role of machine learning and artificial intelligence, the role of political activism beyond the classroom, and the addressing of intersections between race, class, and other dimensions of identity within a critical framework.
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Curriculum: Local, National, Transnational, and Global
Sybil Durand and Nina Asher
Examining curriculum in terms of local, national, transnational, and global contexts requires engaging discourses of postcolonialism, decolonization, and globalization. Curriculum studies, empirical research projects, as well as literature, film, the arts, and social media collectively illustrate the many ways in which local, national, transnational, and global influences intersect and inform each other. These intersections and the tensions they raise with regards to race, culture, gender and sexuality, and nation, in turn shape curriculum, teaching, and educational research. The resurgence of racism, xenophobia, and global capitalism, and the resounding calls for activism in response to social and systemic injustice have implications for education researchers to persevere in advancing decolonizing curriculum studies that aim to dismantle oppressions and build coalitions.
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Indigenous Language Revitalization
Anne Marie Guerrettaz and Mel M. Engman
Countless Indigenous languages around the world are the focus of innovative community regeneration efforts, as the legacies of colonialism have created conditions of extreme sociopolitical, educational, and economic adversity for the speakers of these languages—and their descendants. In response to these conditions that Indigenous people face globally, the burgeoning field of Indigenous language revitalization and maintenance has emerged since the 1990s with the goal of supporting speakers of these languages and future generations. Indigenous language revitalization involves different but often interlocking domains of research, practice, and activism. Given the uniqueness of each community and their desires, history, values, and culture, the significance of the local is critical to the global phenomenon that is language revitalization. For instance, cases on five different continents offer valuable insights into this field, including the Hawaiian language in Oceania; Myaamia in the United States (North America); Básáa in the Cameroon (Africa); Sámi in Finland (Europe); and, Cristang and Malay in Malaysia (Asia). These offer examples of both local resources and common challenges that characterize revitalization efforts.
The field of Indigenous language revitalization is interdisciplinary in nature, exemplified through five lines of inquiry that significantly contribute to this area of research: (a) theoretical linguistics and anthropology, (b) applied linguistics, (c) education, (d) policy studies, and (e) critical studies, including postcolonial studies, Indigenous studies, and raciolinguistics. Questions of research ethics are central to the field of Indigenous language revitalization since reciprocity and collaboration between researchers and Indigenous communities matter as the lifeblood of Indigenous language revitalization work. Finally, we believe that the notion of Indigenous language revitalization pedagogies along with underexplored Indigenous concepts (e.g., from Yucatecan and Māori scholars) offer compelling directions for future research.
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Matching Performance Assessment to Teacher Capabilities: The Bridge Between Teacher Performance/Evaluation and Student Learning
Robert Morris
America’s public educational system is under constant scrutiny concerning student performance on standardized tests. Some blame the teachers, others blame the students, and recently many have begun to blame the test. A clearer picture of the issues is important and by reviewing the traditional aspects for evaluating teachers and then analyzing how contemporary testing methods in today’s classrooms has evolved a clearer perspective can be accomplished. The advent of newer models and methods of teacher assessment that focus on the classroom performance of teachers and based on observable assessments, along with a more authentic measure of student capabilities, are central. Although many researchers praise this movement, others have found many pitfalls in the attempt to standardize performance assessments.
Many critics advocate the use of performance assessments in the classroom but remain loyal to the multiple-choice assessment as the more reliable and valid measure for comparative standardized testing. All aspects of this debate are important however. Given the increasing usage of performance assessment in today’s classrooms, many believe and advocate the development of newer assessments to replace the more traditional assessments. Understanding the roles evaluation and assessment play in reforming teacher evaluation is vital. Different data sources, new social power relations, and new ways of thinking about teacher evaluation are all important. The link between these developments in teacher evaluation and school reform is hoped to bring about an increased focus on the most important resource for change: the best practices of current teachers.
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Race and Student Evaluation
LaVada Taylor
Historicizing implicit biases shrouding Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) course evaluations, this work draws on critical race theory to illuminate the experiences of faculty of color as members of historically marginalized groups teaching in the academy. In so doing, the work grapples with the following questions: How are student course evaluations typically biased against BIPOC faculty? Why do students question the authority and expertise of faculty of color, exhibit negative behavior, and evaluate faculty of color poorly? Why do BIPOC faculty who are also women experience “double-bind” syndrome (i.e., marginalized due to race and gender)? The work expands existing bodies of literature focusing on the correlation of likability and attractiveness with positive course evaluations to include conversations on the ways race and racism inform student evaluations of teaching.
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Social Innovation Pedagogies and Sustainable Models for Future Entrepreneurs, Intrapreneurs, and Citizens
Roisin Lyons and Rahmin Bender-Salazar
The use of innovation to address our social or environmental needs is now critical. Globally, we are faced with numerous challenges which require novel, robust solutions that consider multiple scenarios and stakeholders. Innovation education has often been siloed into enterprise, business, and engineering programs to bolster the innovative potency of startup ventures and internal corporate processes. However, social innovation education (SIE) has merit in all disciplines, and for all citizens, to address these emergent global challenges. Social innovation as a concept and field is related but independent from the concept of innovation, and the pedagogies currently in use in these domains are in early development and practice. Social innovation relates to the creation of new ideas displaying a positive impact on the quality and duration of life. Theories of significance to SIE are rooted in the fields of design, creativity, and education while continuing to expand and evolve. A fitting pedagogy for social innovation should foster socially aware students who have both critical- and systems-thinking skills, empathy and an appreciation for human behavior, and who can leverage innovative competencies to develop solutions for positive social impact. In order to successfully create effective learning spaces, we contend that the curricula elements of (a) empathy, (b) locus of control, and (c) speculative thinking, should be embedded into all SIE learning designs.
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Twenty-First-Century Learning Spaces and Pedagogical Change
Jill Colton
Twenty-first-century learning spaces are designed to enable students to develop the skills and dispositions required for uncertain and transformed futures. They are characterized by flexibility and openness, with architectural and technological features that allow for variable arrangements and digitally enhanced learning. Flexibility is achieved through the provision of features such as sliding doors, moveable furniture, open spaces, and smaller breakout rooms, which may be used by teachers and students in different ways. The flexibility and openness of these spaces are considered to enhance the collaborative, self-directed and inquiry- or project-based learning that are regarded as crucial for an education that prepares students for work and citizenship in the 21st century. The integration of networked digital tools and applications is a key aspect of 21st-century learning spaces and of the pedagogical changes that shape and are shaped by these spaces. Sociomaterial theoretical perspectives offer a way of interpreting and analyzing 21st-century learning spaces in relation to pedagogical change. The flexibility of these spaces is implicated in the flexibility of pedagogical approaches, and the opportunities for movement and varied arrangements in physical and digital spaces are correspondent with the self-managing, digitally literate learner. Links between learning spaces that are flexible, open, and digitally networked and the pedagogies enacted in those spaces have been the subject of empirical studies in Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, and New Zealand. These studies illustrate the importance of considering theoretical perspectives in research that investigates pedagogical change and learning space design.