A Body of Writing, 1990-1999


Book Description

Weaving together her most influential writings of the 1990s, Bronwyn Davies offers a unique engagement with poststructuralism that defies the boundaries between theory and embodied practice. Whereas poststructuralists are often accused of excessive abstraction, Davies' sophisticated and nuanced discussions of subjectivity, agency, epistemology, feminism, and power are embedded in vital depictions of lived experience and empirical research. A renowned scholar of education and gender formation, Davies shows the importance of poststructural perspectives for her own research in classrooms, on playgrounds, with literary texts, and her own life history. Lucid prose--accessible for students and refreshing for researchers and theorists alike--makes postructural concepts usable as conceptual frameworks for interpreting and analyzing the social world.




Theorizing and Analyzing Agency in Second Language Learning


Book Description

Through several unique perspectives and contexts, this volume contributes to current understanding of agency in second language learning. It includes chapters discussing theoretical, analytical and pedagogical approaches, and will serve as a key reference for researchers of language learning and teaching.




Mimetic Learning at Work


Book Description

​The concept of mimetic learning at work is outlined and elaborated in this text. That elaboration consists of an account of how securing occupational capacities has been primary associated with learning processes and an explanation of those processes. Much, and probably most, of the learning and development across individuals working lives occurs outside of circumstances of direct guidance or instruction. Yet, recent considerations of individuals’ epistemologies and developments form anthropology and cognitive science suggest that current explanations about individuals’ contributions to learning at and through work are incomplete. So, there is need for an emphasis on individuals’ processes of learning, both within and outside of situations of guidance by more experienced workers, needs to be more fully understood, and accepted as being person dependent. Contributions from anthropology, developmental studies, and cognitive neuroscience now augment those from sociocultural theory.




Exploring Data Production in Motion


Book Description

Exploring Data Production in Motion facilitates the use of feminist critical qualitative methodologies. With open-ended methods and poststructuralist theory and analysis, this book will offer tools to approach and to examine challenging and controversial topics ethically. This book will argue that to examine data of ‘individual’ experience and aspirations requires examining the process of the data production in which these were ‘produced’. Therefore, this book will form an understanding of a data production as a process, which in its fluidity enables us also to form an understanding of difference and change as inevitable parts of social processes. Movement expresses here the dynamic forces in the data production (including its analysis), which produce ‘the life’ to the lines of the data. It welcomes change and uncertainty by allowing the data production processes, its intensities and fluctuations, to take the lead in the inquiry. This compels the methods to adjust to the requirements of the data production processes. The book demonstrates the use of feminist methodology and illuminates how the feminist critical inquiry is essential in examining issues of minority and difference. In this the focus is in the differences. As a feminist inquiry this book contributes to recognizing differences within while examining minority worldviews and perceiving difference as essential force in striving for sustainable ethics in the times of political polarization. Perfect for Higher Education courses such as: Qualitative Research Methodology | Qualitative Research Methods and Analysis | Feminist Poststructuralist Methodologies and Qualitative Research | Qualitative Methods in Critical Social Research | Experimental Methodologies in Qualitative Research




Foundations of Education Research


Book Description

The theoretical components of research are some of the most complicated and challenging aspects for new researchers to understand. While relevant methodologies are routinely covered by textbooks, the theory behind the practice can remain unnecessarily opaque. In six concise chapters Foundations of Education Research defines, discusses, and provides applications for the central components of research in order to provide researchers with a common ground from which to work. Including conceptual framework, epistemology, paradigm, theory, theoretical framework, and methodology/method, this book gives students the tools they need to understand existing education research literature and to produce theoretically-grounded work of their own. Beginning each chapter with perspectives from both novice and experienced researchers, this book is designed to help students achieve a deeper understanding of what is expected of them and ideas about how to achieve it. Guiding questions from both perspectives can assist researchers who are engaging with theory for the first time and those looking to improve their understanding of the fundamentals. Practice exercises and suggested reading lists at the end of each chapter offer students resources they can apply to their own research and thinking in concrete ways. A perfect accompaniment to standard research courses, this primer demystifies the jargon of education research in practical terms.




The Use of Children's Literature in Teaching


Book Description

The Use of Children's Literature in Teaching reveals the impact of politics, professional guidelines and restrictive measurements of literacy on the emerging identities of young teachers. It places renewed emphasis on the importance of creative teaching with children’s literature for the empowerment of teacher agency to enhance the learning of their students. Framing the debate alongside the issue of teacher autonomy, Simpson describes results from a two-year study, which brings together information from interviews, surveys, document analysis and digital stories from Australia, Canada, the UK and the US to assess the role of children’s literature in pre-service teacher education. Through cross-cultural comparison, this research captures the different levels of connection between politics, education systems, higher education and pre-service teachers. It exposes how politics, narrow views of professionalism and program structures in teacher education may adversely affect the development of pre-service teachers. This book presents a strong case that reading and responding critically to literary texts leads to better educational outcomes than basic decoding and low-level comprehension training. As such, this book will be of great interest to researchers and scholars working in the areas of teacher education and literacy and primary education. It should also be essential reading for teacher educators and policymakers.




Identity Papers


Book Description

How do definitions of literacy in the academy, and the pedagogies that reinforce such definitions, influence and shape our identities as teachers, scholars, and students? The contributors gathered here reflect on those moments when the dominant cultural and institutional definitions of our identities conflict with our other identities, shaped by class, race, gender, sexual orientation, location, or other cultural factors. These writers explore the struggle, identify the sources of conflict, and discuss how they respond personally to such tensions in their scholarship, teaching, and administration. They also illustrate how writing helps them and their students compose alternative identities that may allow the connection of professional identities with internal desires and senses of self. They emphasize how identity comes into play in education and literacy and how institutional and cultural power is reinforced in the pedagogies and values of the writing classroom and writing profession.




Feminism, Family, and Identity in Israel


Book Description

Women's inner struggle over their marital names reveal how they negotiate a specific identity location in each dimension of identity. This book tackles a complex sociological project of examining three existing theories, and will prove to be important for the study of Gender and Middle Eastern Culture.




Flows, Rhythms, and Intensities of Early Childhood Education Curriculum


Book Description

In this book, a group of researchers and educators consider in detail the possibilities and tensions of curriculum-making in early childhood education. The book discusses a wide range of issues related to postfoundational approaches to curriculum, such as the images of children and educators, pedagogical narrations, reflective practice, transitions and routines, the visual arts, social change, and family-educator involvement in the classroom.




Asian American Identities, Families, & Schooling


Book Description

This anthology is the second volume in a series sponsored by the Special Interest Group-Research on the education of Asian and Pacific Americans (SIG-REAPA) of the American Educational Research Association and California Association for Asian and Pacific American Education. The series intends to be a national voice for the education of Asian and Pacific Americans, and provides an integral view of new knowledge in the field of Asian and Pacific American education from scholarly and educational practitioners’ perspectives. The current collection includes research-based articles by junior and senior scholars in the field of Asian and American education. The articles highlight both the success and the continuing struggles of Asian American students, teachers, and families. Students, educational practitioners, and scholars will find this book to be an important resource.