Lev Vygotsky
– individual development is determined by the social & cultural context in which a person is situated.
– learners are influenced by parents, relatives, peers, teachers etc.
– learning is mediated by language
2 significant ideas
– MKO (more knowledgeable other)
– ZPD (the zone of proximal development)
What’s the gap?
How to set up a target?
How to scaffold learning?
From the revised Bloom’s taxonomy and taking it as a cumulative hierarchical framework of educational objective, being critical is one of the key skills, abilities and educational goals second to creativity and problem solving.
Being critical, from Couldry’s argument in “Voice as Value” is to give weight to voices and regard it as a process and be reflexive in the way voices are treated, interpreted and used. The ability and needs of individual persons as a subject to make meaning, reflect and present themselves as a subject need to be recognized.
From Foucault’s Questions to Methods, being critical is to investigate a subject matter by asking not only questions like what and why but how. It is just like a study of “genealogy” of practices. There are practices naturally taken as norms, self-evident and indispensable. Being critical means “examining how forms of rationality inscribe themselves into practices or systems of practices.” Being critical is to make visible the complexity in their interconnection with multiplicity of historical processes and give accounts to any discontinuity or singularity.
Towards a critical educational science, Kemmis, illustrates critical educational science as research for education by bridging the gap between research and practice. The method critical social research adopts as cited by Kemmis from Comstock is “dialogue, and its effect is to heighten its subject’s self awareness of their collective potential as the active agents of history … Critical research links depersonalized social processes to its subjects’ choices and actions with the goal of eliminating unrecognized and contradictory consequences of collective action.” The purpose in short is to engage the major stakeholders to analyze and evaluate various factors and practices from their own situation for transforming education. It therefore links to the idea of action research which is “a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are carried out.”
References
Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., & Bloom, B. S. (2005). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing. Longman.
Comstock, D. (1982), “A method for critical research’, in Bredo, E. and Feinberg, W. (Eds) Knowledge and Values in Social and Educational Research, Philadelphia, Template University Press, pp. 378-9.
Couldry, N. (2010, July 14). Why voice matters: Culture and politics after neoliberalism. Sage Publications.
Foucault, M. (1991) Questions of method, in Burchell, G., Gordon, C., and Miller, P. (Eds.) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, pp.223-238, Harvester Wheatsheaf, London
Kemmis, S. C., W. (1986). Chapter 6: Towards a Critical Educational Science Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research. Abingdon: Deakin University Press.
Classic abstract
– background
– aims
– sample
– methods
– results
– conclusion
Some terms to read on
Hermeneutics – the art of interpretation for transformation
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/145/319
Generalizability
Researcher bias, research privilege
Confidence in results
Maxwell:
Hammersley: plausibility
Lincoln & Guba: creditability
Triangulations: time, space, combined levels, theoretical, investigator, methodological
Reliability
During the discussion on how to ensure veracity, validity & reliability of the research, some terms appear
reflexivity
http://srmo.sagepub.com/view/the-sage-dictionary-of-qualitative-management-research/n86.xml
Hawthorne effect
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
Error types I & II
Click to access Lecture-FDR.pdf
Minimal inference
Factor analysis
Narrative analysis by Bruner
Click to access Bruner_J_LifeAsNarrative.pdf
– Inductive & deductive analysis
– theory building
The very meaningful reflection sometimes happens when being prompted with questions that we regard as a common sense. The immediate thought upon the question I had was, “how could the researchers afford not to take students’ views?” I wonder how critical researcher can be to ignore students, the major stakeholder of education, teaching and learning. I wonder if the words, “listen to”, imply anything that could make things exclusive, alienated or prioritized. Unless learning is purely biological, physical and/or chemical and therefore can be examined simply by medical and scientific instruments, and learners be observed through trained eyes, lens and framework as objects, otherwise how can researchers miss the treasure of learners’ self-perceived, reflected and presented data and information for analysis? The subjectivity of the researcher and research findings could be greatly influenced by the instruments used. Taking students’ voices can help compare, contrast or even triangulate findings from other instrument and sources. Students’ voices could add more texture and substance for in depth analysis of cognition and affect related learning experience and outcomes. More importantly, the subjectivity of the research could be minimized when a sufficient amount of subjectivity of the subjects is carefully considered and analyzed.
Taking student voices is good in principles but may be ambiguous in scope or domain as a result of improper actions and implementation. Who are the researchers? What is the purpose of the research? The probing question itself doesn’t provide much hints. Is it about educational practices or policies? Is it for understanding or evaluation? Teachers as another major stakeholders have at least two roles which may be conflicting with each other. They are regarded as an agent or messenger to pass on the knowledge to students or facilitator to encourage and enable students to learn. Students as the recipients or respondents, should they give feedback to the teachers? This could be regarded as communication matters if not consumption. Feedback helps in identifying noises and evaluating communication means and channels’ efficiency. On the other hand, teachers possess experience, knowledge and expertise on the subjects that are much more superior than students. They also play a major role in assessing students’ mastery and learning accomplishments that could affect the decision in determining students’ academic attainment and qualifications. In this domain, how can students justify their voices or any other inputs? Who else may contribute other than students? Thus it is a matter of subject matters for student voices.
How about educational policy issues? Unless we regard students as a machine that would be automatic or programmed to synthesize multiple inputs and factors and produce desired or intended learning outcomes, their voices need to be heard. The challenges are on operations, weight of voice and justified domains. However there are other stakeholders such as policy makers, parents, employers and social workers etc. who all could have legitimate or honor concerns to raise.
With the time factor, students can also become alumni who may contribute to a longitudinal analysis of educational beliefs, practices, experiences and policies etc.
Readings
Flutter, J. (2007). Teacher development and pupil voice. Curriculum Journal , 18 (3), 343-354 .
Harfitt, G. J. (2012). Class size and language learning in Hong Kong: the student’s perspective.Educational Research , 54 (3), 331-342.
McIntyre, D., Pedder, D., & Rudduck, J. (2005). Pupil voice: comfortable and uncomfortable learnings for teachers. Research Papers in Education , 20 (2), 149-168.
Tsui, A. (2007). Complexities of Identity Formation: A Narrative Inquiry of an EFL Teacher.TESOL Quarterly , 41 (4), 657-680.
Dr. Jean Clandinin
Handbook of Narrative Inquiry
Amy B.M. Tsui used the approach in the paper, Complexities of Identity Formation: A narrative Inquiry of an EFL Teacher
What’s the difference between sustaining & disruptive transformation?
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
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Transformation as co-evolution – a gardening analogy by Law N.
What kind of learning outcomes it refers to?
What measures used?
What does it mean by ICT use?
What beliefs held behind how people learn?
Prof. Nancy Law used two metaphors, a catalyst and a leaver, to clarify what ICT really is or should be. What’s the difference between them? If ICT use is a catalyst, it should definitely bring up reactions and changes. But ICT is not a catalyst but a leaver as she suggested. The leaver helps make things easier but drivers are needed.
How HK & Singapore promoted and used ICT in Education and what impacts they had made were discussed.
Singapore’s ed master plan:
1. 1997 – Building foundation (infrastructure & resources)
2. 2003 – Seeding & Innovation (thinking school, learning nation, teach less and learn more)
3. 2009 – Strengthening & Scaling (focusing on core pedagogy for desired outcomes without overloading teachers: collaborative learning & self- directed learning)
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of over 800 Meta Analyses relating to Achievement. London: Routledge.
It is a sample on using meta-analyses with remarks on problems or criticism of meta-analyses and discussion on attempts tried and major overall findings.
“A common criticism is that it combines “apples and oranges” and such combining of many seemingly disparate studies is fraught with difficulties … Glass argued that “The question of ‘sameness’ is not an priori question at all; apart from being a logical impossibility, it is an empirical question” (Glass, 2000, p.2) “No two studies are the same and the only question of interest is how they vary across the factors we conceived as important.”
Cronbach (1982) criticized the emphasis on “big facts” of meta-analysis and inability in explaining the complexity or inappropriateness in seeking moderators.
Meta-analysis was also criticized in its base on past studies or historical claims with which future is not so bound.
Eysenck (1984) criticized certain low quality studies as “garbage in – garbage out”.
Dear Amia EdD 