Challenging Ways Of Knowing

This work provides an analysis of how knowledge is constructed and defined by teachers and lecturers in schools and universities/colleges. It considers how everyday uses of reading, writing, numeracy and science are cast aside in favour of academic language and academic discourse, arguing that such discourses are alien to learners' daily experiences and are, therefore, difficult to acquire and adopt.; Chapters examine literacies of English, mathematics and science as practised in and outside schools and colleges. The book is interdisciplinary and multicultural, adopting perspectives from the UK, USA, South Africa, India, Brazil and Kenya. It should be of interest to a wide market of educationalists, including those involved in educational policy making, teacher education, cultural/multicultural studies, development studies, anthropology, and adult and continuing education.

This book offers a bold and illuminating account of the worldviews nurtured and sustained by indigenous communities from across continents, through their distinctive understanding of concepts such as space, time, joy, pain, life, and death. It demonstrates how this different mode of ‘knowing’ has brought the indigenous into a cultural conflict with communities that claim to be modern and scientific. Bringing together scholars, artists and activists engaged in understanding and conserving local knowledge that continues to be in the shadow of cultural extinction, the book attempts to interpret repercussions on identity and cultural transformation and points to the tragic fate of knowing the world differently. The volume inaugurates a new thematic area in post-colonial studies and cultural anthropology by highlighting the perspectives of marginalized indigenous communities, often burdened with being viewed as ‘primitive’. It will be useful to scholars and students of anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history, linguistics, literature, and tribal studies.

This work provides an analysis of how knowledge is constructed and defined both inside and outside educational institutions, with chapters examining literacies of English, mathematics and science. The book adopts perspectives from the UK, USA, South Africa, India, Brazil and Kenya.

This classic MUP text discusses the historical development of science, technology and medicine in Western Europe and North America from the Renaissance to the present. Combining theoretical discussion and empirical illustration, it redefines the geography of science, technology and medicine.

This textbook brings together both new and traditional research methods in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Research methods include interviews and observations, ethnography, grounded theory and analysis of digital traces of behavior. Readers will gain an understanding of the type of knowledge each method provides, its disciplinary roots and how each contributes to understanding users, user behavior and the context of use. The background context, clear explanations and sample exercises make this an ideal textbook for graduate students, as well as a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners. 'It is an impressive collection in terms of the level of detail and variety.' (M. Sasikumar, ACM Computing Reviews #CR144066)

Nursing education is facing a massive set of obstacles as the fields of medicine continues to progress at warp speed at the same time hospitals do not have enough doctors and depend more on nurses than anytime before. The result is overworked nurses running to keep it with the fields in which they must work. This book presents some analyses of nursing education at a critical juncture in the field.

This collection demonstrates how feminist pedagogy can be implemented in a variety of institutional and disciplinary settings. Unlike most of the current literature, it provides a vast array of examples of feminist pedagogy in action. It suggests practical ways of creating classroom environments open to feminist and anti-racist teaching, way feminists at universities can intervene in community programs and how to apply feminist pedagogy to new challenges such as distance education, cyberspace, fiscal constraints, and the changing political climate. Meeting the Challenge also looks to other nations for examples of how to successfully implement feminist pedagogy.

This contributed volume explores equity and social justice within the field of mathematics education. In part one, Helga Jungwirth's introductory chapter provides a strong theoretical overview that is based in actual classroom behaviors and a typology that classifies the various interpretations found within this volume. Also in part one, Laurie Hart discusses developments in equity research in the United States. Part two focuses on results of studies about social justice and their impact on learning in mathematics classrooms in various parts of the world. For example, in a chapter on Peru, social justice does not just encompass gender, but also inequalities in opportunities to learn, such as problems of resources, living and social conditions, communal demands and language needs. And, part three focuses on computers as a resource to mathematics teaching. The contributors raise several important social justice issues which have previously remained unresearched. Although there are a number of chapters specifically dealing with gender, many of the authors use one of the following strategies: their gender-specific questions are set in a wider socio-cultural context, they challenge what have threatened to become false orthodoxies, or they raise other important issues. These other issues include the meaning of democratic citizenship for mathematics classrooms, the links between parents and children learning mathematics, and the preconceptions of some teachers of underprivileged students in Australia. Other chapters explore different forms of classroom communication, participation, and assessment. The pieces on computers state that there is still not enough research to conclude whether computers in the mathematics classrooms are supportive of, or detrimental to, the learning of all students. The one thing on which every author in this volume does agree is that social justice in mathematics education has still not been attained, but that we must strive toward it to improve educational practices and society in general.