In considering how a new Handbook of Research in Social Studies Education might be organized, we looked not only to the previous Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning (1991), but also to National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) position statements, publications, and committee structures, to the arguments of critics and proponents of the fi eld, and to the work of scholars who identify themselves with the fi eld. We searched out defi nitions of social studies, statements of purpose, and themes that linked (or divided) theory, research, and practice. As the chapters that follow demonstrate, social studies is a complex, challenging, and largely under-researched fi eld. Given its many disciplinary roots, competing perspectives about appropriate goals, and ongoing confl ict over the content of the social studies curriculum, social studies will no doubt remain complex,challenging, and, one hopes, dynamic. It need not remain under-researched. We hope that this Handbook will not only outline the present state of things, but encourage the kind of new research needed to move the fi eld forward and foster the civic competence that advocates for the social studies have long claimed as a fundamental goal of the fi eld.
There is an extraordinary but largely unnoticed phenomenon in higher education: by and large, students persevere and complete their studies. How should we interpret this tendency? Students are living in uncertain times and often experience anxiety, and yet they continue to press forward with their studies. The argument here is that we should understand this propensity on the part of students to persist through a will to learn. This book examines the structure of what it is to have a will to learn. Here, a language of being, becoming, authenticity, dispositions, voice, air, spirit, inspiration and care is drawn on.As such, this book offers an idea of student development that challenges the dominant views of our age, of curricula understood largely in terms of skill or even of knowledge, and pedagogy understood as bringing off pre-specified 'outcomes'. The will to learn, though, can be fragile. This is of crucial importance, for if the will to learn dissolves, the student's commitment may falter. Accordingly, more than encouraging an interest in the student's subject or in the acquiring of skills, the primary responsibility of teachers in higher education is to sustain and develop the student's will to learn. This is a radical thesis, for it implies a transformation in how we understand the nature of teaching in higher education.
This novel and important book brings together insights from cultural studies and critical discourse analysis to examine the fruitful links between the two. Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis shows that critical discourse analysis is able to provide the analytic context, skills and tools by which we can study how language constructs, constitutes and shapes the social world and demonstrates in detail how the methodological approach of critical discourse analysis can enhance cultural studies. In a richly argued discussion, the authors show how marrying the methodology of critical discourse analysis with cultural studies enlarges our understanding of gender and ethnicity.
Discourse Studiesis a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal for the study of text and talk. Publishing outstanding work on the structures and strategies of written and spoken discourse, special attention is given to cross-disciplinary studies of text and talk in linguistics, anthropology, ethnomethodology, cognitive and social psychology, communication studies and law.
The purpose of the present volume, then, is twofold; first to update teachers, researchers, policymakers/administrators, and others on what is involved in this complex issue of testing and its effects, and how such a phenomenon benefits teaching and learning, and second, to provide researchers with models of research studies on which future studies can be based. In order to address these two main purposes, the volume consists of two parts. Part I provides readers with an overall view of the complexity of washback, and the various contextual factors entangled within testing, teaching, and learning. Part II provides a collection of empirical washback studies carried out in many different parts of the world, which lead the readers further into the heart of the issue within each educational context.
