Wolff-Michael Roth - Böcker

In what way do educators understand the language they use to make sense of the educational environment?How does language enable educators and how can they consciously make the most of its potential?Using the right language and setting the correct tone in the school classroom has repercussions for all involved; whether it affects the linguistic development of a student or the effective delivery of a lesson, language plays an important factor in any educational context. As such, this innovative book focuses right at the heart of learning, arguing that current theories of speech in classrooms do not, and cannot, capture the essentially passive aspects of talking. Until now, these verbal and physical expressions of communication have been left untheorised, leaving the potential of an entire secondary area of language untapped.Exploring his argument along three clear, but interrelated lines of investigation, the author focuses on our understanding, on language itself and finally on communication. Thus he argues: that language is unintentional and our understanding of it is limitedas soon as we speak, language appears beyond us in a highly singular, situated contextthat communication cannot be reduced to the simple production of words. Building on the work of linguistic philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Donald Davidson, Paul Ricœur and Jacques Derrida, these salient points are further elaborated to fully develop the relationship between thinking and talk in educational settings.This invaluable book makes recommendations for the praxis of teaching and will appeal to students, researchers, and practising science and mathematics teachers, as well as those with interests in language and literacy.

In what way do educators understand the language they use to make sense of the educational environment?How does language enable educators and how can they consciously make the most of its potential?Using the right language and setting the correct tone in the school classroom has repercussions for all involved; whether it affects the linguistic development of a student or the effective delivery of a lesson, language plays an important factor in any educational context. As such, this innovative book focuses right at the heart of learning, arguing that current theories of speech in classrooms do not, and cannot, capture the essentially passive aspects of talking. Until now, these verbal and physical expressions of communication have been left untheorised, leaving the potential of an entire secondary area of language untapped.Exploring his argument along three clear, but interrelated lines of investigation, the author focuses on our understanding, on language itself and finally on communication. Thus he argues: that language is unintentional and our understanding of it is limitedas soon as we speak, language appears beyond us in a highly singular, situated contextthat communication cannot be reduced to the simple production of words. Building on the work of linguistic philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Donald Davidson, Paul Ricœur and Jacques Derrida, these salient points are further elaborated to fully develop the relationship between thinking and talk in educational settings.This invaluable book makes recommendations for the praxis of teaching and will appeal to students, researchers, and practising science and mathematics teachers, as well as those with interests in language and literacy.

This study examines the origins of geometry in and out of the intuitively given everyday lifeworlds of children in a second-grade mathematics class. These lifeworlds, though pre-geometric, are not without model objects that denote and come to anchor geometric idealities that they will understand at later points in their lives. Roth's analyses explain how geometry, an objective science, arises anew from the pre-scientific but nevertheless methodic actions of children in a structured world always already shot through with significations. He presents a way of understanding knowing and learning in mathematics that differs from other current approaches, using case studies to demonstrate contradictions and incongruences of other theories – Immanuel Kant, Jean Piaget, and more recent forms of (radical, social) constructivism, embodiment theories, and enactivism – and to show how material phenomenology fused with phenomenological sociology provides answers to the problems that these other paradigms do not answer.

Rethinking Scientific Literacy presents a new perspective on science learning as a tool for improving communities. By focusing on case studies inside and outside of the classroom, the authors illuminate the relevance of science in students' everyday lives, offering a new vision of scientific literacy that is inextricably linked with social responsibility and community development. The goal if not tote memorization of facts and theories, but a broader competency in scientific thinking and the ability to generate positive change.

"This book frames the major challenge facing educational researchers as one of going beyond the mindless qualitative-quantitative divide and addressing the overarching/fundamental challenge of enriching and enlarging educational inquiry. It is a signature contribution to the field." - Clifton F. Conrad, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USATackling one of the most critical issues in education research today - how research methods are related to value and meaningfulness - this frontline volume achieves two purposes. First, it presents an integrated approach to educational inquiry that works toward a continuum instead of a dichotomy of generalizability, and looks at how this continuum might be related to types of research questions asked and how these questions should determine modes of inquiry. Second, it discusses and demonstrates the contributions of different data types and modes of research to generalizability of research findings, and to limitations of research findings that utilize a single approach.International leaders in the field take the discussion of generalizing in education research to a level where claims are supported using multiple types of evidence. The volume pushes the field in a different direction, where the focus is on creating meaningful research findings that are not polarized by qualitative versus quantitative methodologies. The integrative approach allows readers to better understand possibilities and shortcomings of different types of research.

"This book frames the major challenge facing educational researchers as one of going beyond the mindless qualitative-quantitative divide and addressing the overarching/fundamental challenge of enriching and enlarging educational inquiry. It is a signature contribution to the field." - Clifton F. Conrad, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USATackling one of the most critical issues in education research today - how research methods are related to value and meaningfulness - this frontline volume achieves two purposes. First, it presents an integrated approach to educational inquiry that works toward a continuum instead of a dichotomy of generalizability, and looks at how this continuum might be related to types of research questions asked and how these questions should determine modes of inquiry. Second, it discusses and demonstrates the contributions of different data types and modes of research to generalizability of research findings, and to limitations of research findings that utilize a single approach.International leaders in the field take the discussion of generalizing in education research to a level where claims are supported using multiple types of evidence. The volume pushes the field in a different direction, where the focus is on creating meaningful research findings that are not polarized by qualitative versus quantitative methodologies. The integrative approach allows readers to better understand possibilities and shortcomings of different types of research.

Contributing to the social justice agenda of redefining what science is and what it means in the everyday lives of people, this book introduces science educators to various dimensions of viewing science and scientific literacy from the standpoint of the learner, engaged with real everyday concerns within or outside school; develops a new form of scholarship based on the dialogic nature of science as process and product; and achieves these two objectives in a readable but scholarly way.Opposing the tendency to teach and do research as if science, science education, and scientific literacy could be imposed from the outside, the authors want science education to be for people rather than strictly about how knowledge gets into their heads. Taking up the challenges of this orientation, science educators can begin to make inroads into the currently widespread irrelevance of science in the everyday lives of people. Utmost attention has been given to making this book readable by the people from whose lives the topics of the chapters emerge, all the while retaining academic integrity and high-level scholarship.Wolff Michael Roth has been awarded the Distinguished Contributions Award by The National Association for Research in Science Teaching, for his contributions to research in this field.He has also been elected to be the Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.

According to John Dewey, Seymour Papert, Donald Schon, and Allan Collins, school activities, to be authentic, need to share key features with those worlds about which they teach. This book documents learning and teaching in open-inquiry learning environments, designed with the precepts of these educational thinkers in mind. The book is thus a first-hand report of knowing and learning by individuals and groups in complex open-inquiry learning environments in science. As such, it contributes to the emerging literature in this field. Secondly, it exemplifies research methods for studying such complex learning environments. The reader is thus encouraged not only to take the research findings as such, but to reflect on the process of arriving at these findings. Finally, the book is also an example of knowledge constructed by a teacher-researcher, and thus a model for teacher-researcher activity.

According to John Dewey, Seymour Papert, Donald Schon, and Allan Collins, school activities, to be authentic, need to share key features with those worlds about which they teach. This book documents learning and teaching in open-inquiry learning environments, designed with the precepts of these educational thinkers in mind. The book is thus a first-hand report of knowing and learning by individuals and groups in complex open-inquiry learning environments in science. As such, it contributes to the emerging literature in this field. Secondly, it exemplifies research methods for studying such complex learning environments. The reader is thus encouraged not only to take the research findings as such, but to reflect on the process of arriving at these findings. Finally, the book is also an example of knowledge constructed by a teacher-researcher, and thus a model for teacher-researcher activity.

This book employs a set of theoretical frames to reveal a panorama of research findings having potential interest for educational researchers, policy makers, teacher educators and K-12 teachers. It maintains that ideal science classrooms feature creative and inquisitive students working together to solve problems that interest them. More learning occurs at centres of high pupil density and students who participate most in on-task activities are not necessarily those who contribute or learn most. The book identifies weaknesses of assessment based on products only, and highlights the advantages of using videotapes as sources for assessment. Roth shows that student learning is not only a result of individual sense-making efforts but involves interactions between living and artifactual components of a community of participants.

This book employs a set of theoretical frames to reveal a panorama of research findings having potential interest for educational researchers, policy makers, teacher educators and K-12 teachers. It maintains that ideal science classrooms feature creative and inquisitive students working together to solve problems that interest them. More learning occurs at centres of high pupil density and students who participate most in on-task activities are not necessarily those who contribute or learn most. The book identifies weaknesses of assessment based on products only, and highlights the advantages of using videotapes as sources for assessment. Roth shows that student learning is not only a result of individual sense-making efforts but involves interactions between living and artifactual components of a community of participants.

Establishing Scientific Classroom Discourse Communities: Multiple Voices of Teaching and Learning Research is designed to encourage discussion of issues surrounding the reform of classroom science discourse among teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. The contributors--some of the top educational researchers, linguists, and science educators in the world--represent a variety of perspectives pertaining to teaching, assessment, research, learning, and reform. As a whole the book explores the variety, complexity, and interconnectivity of issues associated with changing classroom learning communities and transforming science classroom discourse to be more representative of the discourse of scientific communities. The intent is to expand debate among educators regarding what constitutes exemplary scientific speaking, thinking, and acting. This book is unparalleled in discussing current reform issues from sociolinguistic and sociocultural perspectives. The need for a revised perspective on enduring science teaching and learning issues is established and a theoretical framework and methodology for interpreting the critique of classroom and science discourses is presented. To model and scaffold this ongoing debate, each chapter is followed by a "metalogue" in which the chapter authors and volume editors critique the issues traversed in the chapter by opening up the neatly argued issues. These "metalogues" challenge, extend, and deepen the arguments made. Central questions addressed include: *Why is a sociolinguistic interpretation essential in examining science education reform? *What are key similarities and differences between classroom and scientific communities? *How can the utility of common knowledge and existing classroom discourse be balanced toward alternative outcomes? *What curricular issues are associated with transforming classroom talk? *What other perspectives can assist in creating multiple access to science through redefining classroom discourse? Whether this volume improves readers' science teaching, assists their research, or helps them to better prepare tomorrow's science teachers, the goal is to engage them in considering the challenges faced by educators as they navigate the seas of reform and strive to improve science education for all.

Science learning that takes place between and at the intersections of formal and informal science environments has not been systematically reviewed to offer a comprehensive understanding of the existing knowledge base. Bringing together theory and research, this volume describes the various ways in which learning science in various settings has been conceptualized as well as empirical evidence to illustrate how science learning in these settings can be supported.

This study examines the origins of geometry in and out of the intuitively given everyday lifeworlds of children in a second-grade mathematics class. These lifeworlds, though pre-geometric, are not without model objects that denote and come to anchor geometric idealities that they will understand at later points in their lives. Roth's analyses explain how geometry, an objective science, arises anew from the pre-scientific but nevertheless methodic actions of children in a structured world always already shot through with significations. He presents a way of understanding knowing and learning in mathematics that differs from other current approaches, using case studies to demonstrate contradictions and incongruences of other theories – Immanuel Kant, Jean Piaget, and more recent forms of (radical, social) constructivism, embodiment theories, and enactivism – and to show how material phenomenology fused with phenomenological sociology provides answers to the problems that these other paradigms do not answer.

Psychology, quantitative or qualitative, tends to conceive of the human person using metaphysical concepts and to separate the practical, affective, and intellectual aspects of participation in everyday life. Lev S. Vygotsky, however, was working towards a "concrete human psychology," a goal that he expresses in a small, unfinished text of the same name. This book articulates the foundation of and develops such a concrete human psychology according to which all higher psychological functions are relations between persons before being functions, and according to which personality is the ensemble of societal relations with others that a person has lived and experienced. Correlated with concern for the concreteness of human life and the psychology that theorizes it is the idea that to live means to change. However, none of the categories we currently have in psychology are categories of change as such. In this work of concrete human psychology, categories are developed on the basis of Vygotsky’s work that are suitable to theorize an ever-changing life, including the language humans use to take control over their conditions and to talk about the conditions in which they live.

Psychology, quantitative or qualitative, tends to conceive of the human person using metaphysical concepts and to separate the practical, affective, and intellectual aspects of participation in everyday life. Lev S. Vygotsky, however, was working towards a "concrete human psychology," a goal that he expresses in a small, unfinished text of the same name. This book articulates the foundation of and develops such a concrete human psychology according to which all higher psychological functions are relations between persons before being functions, and according to which personality is the ensemble of societal relations with others that a person has lived and experienced. Correlated with concern for the concreteness of human life and the psychology that theorizes it is the idea that to live means to change. However, none of the categories we currently have in psychology are categories of change as such. In this work of concrete human psychology, categories are developed on the basis of Vygotsky’s work that are suitable to theorize an ever-changing life, including the language humans use to take control over their conditions and to talk about the conditions in which they live.

Science learning that takes place between and at the intersections of formal and informal science environments has not been systematically reviewed to offer a comprehensive understanding of the existing knowledge base. Bringing together theory and research, this volume describes the various ways in which learning science in various settings has been conceptualized as well as empirical evidence to illustrate how science learning in these settings can be supported.

School science is dominated by textbook-oriented approaches to teaching and learning. Some surveys reveal that students have to read, depending on academic level, between ten and thirty-six pages per week from their textbook. One therefore has to ask, To what degree do textbooks introduce students to the literary practices of their domain? Few studies have addressed the quality of science curriculum materials, particularly textbooks, from a critical perspective. In this light, we are concerned in this book with better understanding the reading and interpretation practices related to visual materials - here referred to as inscriptions - that accompany texts. Our overarching questions included: ‘What practices are required for reading inscriptions?’ and ‘Do textbooks allow students to develop levels of graphicacy required to critically read scientific texts?’ Some of the more specific questions included: ‘What are the practices of relating inscriptions, captions, and main text?,’ and ‘What practices are required to read inscriptions in school textbooks?’ That is, we are interested not only in understanding what it takes to interpret, read, and understand visual materials (i.e., inscriptions), but also in understanding what it takes to engage inscriptions in a critical way. It is only when citizens can critically engage with language (texts, speech) and inscriptions that they become knowledgeable users of television, newspapers, and magazines, who can choose or leave aside particular expressions as part of the particular politics that they participate in.

School science is dominated by textbook-oriented approaches to teaching and learning. Some surveys reveal that students have to read, depending on academic level, between ten and thirty-six pages per week from their textbook. One therefore has to ask, To what degree do textbooks introduce students to the literary practices of their domain? Few studies have addressed the quality of science curriculum materials, particularly textbooks, from a critical perspective. In this light, we are concerned in this book with better understanding the reading and interpretation practices related to visual materials - here referred to as inscriptions - that accompany texts. Our overarching questions included: ‘What practices are required for reading inscriptions?’ and ‘Do textbooks allow students to develop levels of graphicacy required to critically read scientific texts?’ Some of the more specific questions included: ‘What are the practices of relating inscriptions, captions, and main text?,’ and ‘What practices are required to read inscriptions in school textbooks?’ That is, we are interested not only in understanding what it takes to interpret, read, and understand visual materials (i.e., inscriptions), but also in understanding what it takes to engage inscriptions in a critical way. It is only when citizens can critically engage with language (texts, speech) and inscriptions that they become knowledgeable users of television, newspapers, and magazines, who can choose or leave aside particular expressions as part of the particular politics that they participate in.

Curriculum*-in-the-Making theorizes about the living curriculum as an event that is in the making, for the enacted curriculum is something finished, which, only as an object, can be compared to another object. A living curriculum, understood as an event*-in-the-making, leads to a very different appreciation of just what is happening in a classroom. Events* are understood to be in the making so we cannot know the precise nature of what we witness until after completion has been achieved. This book uses lesson fragments to develop a post-constructivist perspective on curriculum that is grounded in a phenomenological approach concerned with understanding the never-ending movement of life. This leads to radically different forms of understanding of curriculum issues such as the subject, ethics, the role of passibility and passivity, the nature of the response, and the learning paradox.

Curriculum*-in-the-Making theorizes about the living curriculum as an event that is in the making, for the enacted curriculum is something finished, which, only as an object, can be compared to another object. A living curriculum, understood as an event*-in-the-making, leads to a very different appreciation of just what is happening in a classroom. Events* are understood to be in the making so we cannot know the precise nature of what we witness until after completion has been achieved. This book uses lesson fragments to develop a post-constructivist perspective on curriculum that is grounded in a phenomenological approach concerned with understanding the never-ending movement of life. This leads to radically different forms of understanding of curriculum issues such as the subject, ethics, the role of passibility and passivity, the nature of the response, and the learning paradox.

Over the past two decades, the theoretical interests of mathematics educators have changed substantially—as any brief look at the titles and abstracts of articles shows. Largely through the work of Paul Cobb and his various collaborators, mathematics educators came to be attuned to the intricate relationship between individual and the social configuration of which she or he is part. That is, this body of work, running alongside more traditional constructivist and psychological approaches, showed that what happens at the collective level in a classroom both constrains and affords opportunities for what individuals do (their practices). Increasingly, researchers focused on the mediational role of sociomathematical norms and how these emerged from the enacted lessons.A second major shift in mathematical theorizing occurred during the past decade: there is an increasing focus on the embodied and bodily manifestation of mathematical knowing (e.g., Lakoff & Núñez, 2000). Mathematics educators now working from this perspective have come to their position from quite different bodies of literatures: for some, linguistic concerns and mathematics as material praxis lay at the origin for their concerns; others came to their position through the literature on the situated nature of cognition; and yet another line of thinking emerged from the work on embodiment that Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela advanced. Whatever the historical origins of their thinking, mathematics educators taking an embodiment perspective presuppose that it is of little use to think of mathematical knowing in terms of transcendental concepts somehow recorded in the brain, but rather, that we need to conceptual knowing as mediated by the human body, which, because of its senses, is at the origin of sense.One of the question seldom asked is how the two perspectives, one that focuses on the bodily, embodied nature of mathematical cognition and the other that focuses on its social nature, can be thought together. This edited volume situates itself at the intersection of theoretical and focal concerns of both of these lines of work. In all chapters, the current culture both at the classroom and at the societal level comes to be expressed and provides opportunities for expressing oneself in particular ways; and these expressions always are bodily expressions of body-minds. As a collective, the chapters focus on mathematical knowledge as an aspect or attribute of mathematical performance; that is, mathematical knowing is in the doing rather than attributable to some mental substrate structured in particular ways as conceived by conceptual change theorists or traditional cognitive psychologists. The collection as a whole shows readers important aspects of mathematical cognition that are produced and observable at the interface between the body (both human and those of [inherently material] inscriptions) and culture. Drawing on cultural-historical activity theory, the editor develops an integrative perspective that serves as a background to a narrative that runs through and pulls together the book into an integrated whole.

Over the past two decades, the theoretical interests of mathematics educators have changed substantially—as any brief look at the titles and abstracts of articles shows. Largely through the work of Paul Cobb and his various collaborators, mathematics educators came to be attuned to the intricate relationship between individual and the social configuration of which she or he is part. That is, this body of work, running alongside more traditional constructivist and psychological approaches, showed that what happens at the collective level in a classroom both constrains and affords opportunities for what individuals do (their practices). Increasingly, researchers focused on the mediational role of sociomathematical norms and how these emerged from the enacted lessons.A second major shift in mathematical theorizing occurred during the past decade: there is an increasing focus on the embodied and bodily manifestation of mathematical knowing (e.g., Lakoff & Núñez, 2000). Mathematics educators now working from this perspective have come to their position from quite different bodies of literatures: for some, linguistic concerns and mathematics as material praxis lay at the origin for their concerns; others came to their position through the literature on the situated nature of cognition; and yet another line of thinking emerged from the work on embodiment that Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela advanced. Whatever the historical origins of their thinking, mathematics educators taking an embodiment perspective presuppose that it is of little use to think of mathematical knowing in terms of transcendental concepts somehow recorded in the brain, but rather, that we need to conceptual knowing as mediated by the human body, which, because of its senses, is at the origin of sense.One of the question seldom asked is how the two perspectives, one that focuses on the bodily, embodied nature of mathematical cognition and the other that focuses on its social nature, can be thought together. This edited volume situates itself at the intersection of theoretical and focal concerns of both of these lines of work. In all chapters, the current culture both at the classroom and at the societal level comes to be expressed and provides opportunities for expressing oneself in particular ways; and these expressions always are bodily expressions of body-minds. As a collective, the chapters focus on mathematical knowledge as an aspect or attribute of mathematical performance; that is, mathematical knowing is in the doing rather than attributable to some mental substrate structured in particular ways as conceived by conceptual change theorists or traditional cognitive psychologists. The collection as a whole shows readers important aspects of mathematical cognition that are produced and observable at the interface between the body (both human and those of [inherently material] inscriptions) and culture. Drawing on cultural-historical activity theory, the editor develops an integrative perspective that serves as a background to a narrative that runs through and pulls together the book into an integrated whole.

Toward the end of his life, the Russian psychologist L.S. Vygotsky turned away from his earlier work that he has become famous for only to sow the seeds for a new theory. In this theory, affect was to play a central role, there was to be a primacy of social relations, and anything mental (mind, thought, self, other, knowledge) was an event rather than a thing. This is essentially a transactional perspective. In this book, the author articulates a transactional psychology of education drawing on the works of G.H. Mead, J. Dewey, G. Bateson, F. Mikhailov, and E. Il’enkov. All theoretical positions are developed out of videotaped exchanges, thereby giving concrete character to every psychological concept articulated.

This monograph uses the concept and category of “event” in the study of mathematics as it emerges from an interaction between levels of cognition, from the bodily experiences to symbolism. It is subdivided into three parts.The first moves from a general characterization of the classical approach to mathematical cognition and mind toward laying the foundations for a view on the mathematical mind that differs from going approaches in placing primacy on events.The second articulates some common phenomena–mathematical thought, mathematical sign, mathematical form, mathematical reason and its development, and affect in mathematics–in new ways that are based on the previously developed ontology of events. The final part has more encompassing phenomena as its content, most prominently the thinking body of mathematics, the experience in and of mathematics, and the relationship between experience and mind. The volume is well-suited for anyone with a broad interest in educationaltheory and/or social development, or with a broad background in psychology.

This monograph uses the concept and category of “event” in the study of mathematics as it emerges from an interaction between levels of cognition, from the bodily experiences to symbolism. It is subdivided into three parts.The first moves from a general characterization of the classical approach to mathematical cognition and mind toward laying the foundations for a view on the mathematical mind that differs from going approaches in placing primacy on events.The second articulates some common phenomena–mathematical thought, mathematical sign, mathematical form, mathematical reason and its development, and affect in mathematics–in new ways that are based on the previously developed ontology of events. The final part has more encompassing phenomena as its content, most prominently the thinking body of mathematics, the experience in and of mathematics, and the relationship between experience and mind. The volume is well-suited for anyone with a broad interest in educationaltheory and/or social development, or with a broad background in psychology.