Beatrice Medicine and the Anthropology of Education: Legacy and Vision for Critical Race/Critical Language Research and Praxis

Over a 50-year professional career, Dr. Beatrice Medicine never failed to assert the importance of Indigenous language rights or to challenge racism in the academy, public schools, and society. She urged educational anthropologists to confront racism in our research with Indigenous peoples. She challenged linguicism and urged the teaching of Native American languages in schools. Bea Medicine's legacy provides a compelling vision for the future of the field of educational anthropology, particularly in the domains of critical race theory and critical language studies. In this article, we consider both the legacy and the vision of Beatrice Medicine as they guide us to new arenas of research and praxis.     

Teaching of Microbiology in Schools

Differences between games, simulations, and case studies are identified. The values of these approaches are considered. Examples of particular uses within a biological context are provided. Appendices provide details of commercially available materials and articles on biological games.     

A white side of black Britain: The concept of racial literacy

Opposition to transracial adoption on both sides of the Atlantic, has been based, in part, on the assumption that white parents cannot understand race or racism and thus cannot properly prepare children of multiracial heritage to cope with racism. In this article I draw on a seven-year ethnographic study to offer an intensive case study of white transracial birth parents that counters this racial logic. I draw on a subset of data collected from field research and in-depth interviews with 102 members of black-white interracial families in England. I provide an analysis of three practices that I discovered among white transracial birth parents who were attempting to cultivate ‘black’ identities in their children of multiracial heritage. I offer the concept of ‘racial literacy’ to theorize their parental labour as a type of anti-racist project that remains under the radar of conventional sociological analyses of racism and anti-racist social movements.     

Ethnic Identity and Power: Cultural Contexts of Political Action in School and Society.

Ethnic Identity and Power. Cultural Contexts of Political Action in School and Society. Yali Zou and Enrique T. Trueba. eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. 452 pp.     

Intentionality and Expertise: Learning from Observations of Children at Play in Multilingual, Multicultural Contexts

This article draws from three ethnographic studies of children playing sociodramatically in multilingual, multicultural contexts. Countering a deficit perspective that focuses on what children from nondominant cultures do not know, we use the concept of syncretism to illuminate children's expertise and intentionality as they blend knowledge from multiple worlds to reinvent cultural practices and create new spaces for learning. Findings encourage educators to learn from the syncretic nature of children's teaching and learning through play.     

Using Avida-ED for Teaching and Learning About Evolution in Undergraduate Introductory Biology Courses

Evolution is a complex subject that requires knowledge of basic biological concepts and the ability to connect them across multiple scales of time, space, and biological organization. Avida-ED is a digital evolution educational software environment designed for teaching and learning about evolution and the nature of science in undergraduate biology courses. This study describes our backward design approach to developing an instructional activity using Avida-ED for teaching and learning about evolution in a large-enrollment introductory biology course. Using multiple assessment instruments, we measured student knowledge and understanding of key principles of natural selection before and after instruction on evolution (including the Avida-ED activity). Assessment analysis revealed significant post-instruction learning gains, although certain evolutionary principles (most notably those including genetics concepts, such as the genetic origin of variation) remained particularly difficult for students, even after instruction. Students, however, demonstrated a good grasp of the genetic component of the evolutionary process in the context of a problem on Avida-ED. We propose that: (a) deep understanding of evolution requires complex systems thinking skills, such as connecting concepts across multiple levels of biological organization, and (b) well designed use of Avida-ED holds the potential to help learners build a meaningful and transferable understanding of the evolutionary process. An erratum to this article can be found at     

现代教育理论在生物科技活动中的应用

以认知学习理论、建构主义理论、创新教育理论、多元智能理论、合作学习理论、服务学习理论为例,初步探讨了教育理论在生物科技活动中的应用。     

The development of the critical theory of evolution: The scientific career of Wolfgang F. Gutmann

Summary The critical theory of evolution was developed by a group of scientists working together with Wolfgang F. Gutmann at the Senckenberg-Research-Institute in Frankfurt am Main. Gutmann worked at Senckenberg for 37 years. In this time he presented 247 contributions which are distributed over 47 periodicals and books. The ideas that were developed by Gutmann and his colleagues were innovative and pathbreaking for morphology and evolutionary biology. The large number of his morphological publications is indicative of the wide field that was opened up by the concepts of constructional morphology. As some of his colleagues have suggested, constructional morphology as an engineering approach to the study of organisms (i. e., engineering morphology) may replace the traditional concepts of morphology and anatomy and provides the observational base for the historical reconstruction of evolutionary pathways. Constructional morphology as a quasi-engineering approach can be the morphological pendant to the contemporary molecular approaches to biology, as it can provide the necessary morphological basis for the interpretation of the results of molecular studies in the light of evolution.     

Navigating Contradictory Communities of Practice in Learning to Teach for Social Justice

In this article, I explore the contradictions that four new teachers experienced as their commitments to social justice collide with urban school culture. Framed within Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's (1999) theory of situated learning and development concepts of identity, practice, and relationships illustrate how teachers' ideals are challenged as socializing features of two communities of practice—the universities and schools—intersect in new teachers' development. This research contributes empirical evidence of the application of critical multicultural teacher preparation into practice, a cultural representation of how educational inequities are reproduced or disrupted in the situated contexts of urban schools, an application of Lave and Wenger's theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation that incorporates formal and informal education across multiple activity settings, and a call for collaborative communities of practice that support teachers' situated learning in creating transformative practices.     

Bringing Navajo Storytelling Practices into Schools: The Importance of Maintaining Cultural Integrity

This article examines storytelling practices among Navajos as one example of a non-Western approach to education. The article discusses two stories—one regarding the perspectives of Navajo storytellers concerning the importance of the context of storytelling practices and the other about the research process that led to these perspectives. Eight storytellers were interviewed about storytelling practices in the past and those they would like to see in the future. Implications of the importance of key storytelling practices for Navajo education as well as for changes in Western approaches to schooling are presented.     

The House Building of Caddis Larvae: A Source of Projects for Schools

Protoplasmic streaming (cyclosis) in plant cells has long been presented as a purely qualitative exercise in microscopy. Using simple formulae, it is possible to determine the energetics of this process (in terms of ATP hydrolysis) and its relation to the total energy expenditure of the plant cell. This exercise can provide a valuable integration of physicochemical principles and microscopical observation.     

Teaching Genetics : The Practical Problems of Breeding Investigations

Biotechnology, microbiology, and schools, Brian Bainbridge     

职业技术学院《微生物学》考试改革初探

为了更好地为社会输送大批有用的高级应用型技术人才,培养和提高学生一定的理论知识水平和实验操作技能是职业技术学院微生物学教学的目标之一。微生物学课程的理论部分和实验部分采用“当堂课考核需要掌握的关键点”的考试方法后,不仅大大提高了学生学习本课程的积极性而且还提高了学习成绩,特别是学生对“需要掌握的关键点”掌握得特别牢固。“当堂课考核需要掌握的关键点”的考试方法不失为一种可操作的考核方案。     

The Absorption Hypothesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical Christianity

ABSTRACT  In this article, we use a combination of ethnographic data and empirical methods to identify a process called "absorption," which may be involved in contemporary Christian evangelical prayer practice (and in the practices of other religions). The ethnographer worked with an interdisciplinary team to identify people with a proclivity for "absorption." Those who seemed to have this proclivity were more likely to report sharper mental images, greater focus, and more unusual spiritual experience. The more they prayed, the more likely they were to have these experiences and to embrace fully the local representation of God. Our results emphasize learning, a social process to which individuals respond in variable ways, and they suggest that interpretation, proclivity, and practice are all important in understanding religious experience. This approach builds on but differs from the approach to religion within the culture-and-cognition school.     

The Orphanista Manifesto: Orphan Films and the Politics of Reproduction

In this essay, I review the works of filmmakers Bill Morrison and Gregorio Rocha and contextualize their work within a growing apocalyptic cultural movement of film preservationists who identify as "orphanistas." As orphanistas they struggle to reshape and reproduce cultural memory and heritage through reviving "orphans"—films abandoned by their makers. Moving images mimic cognitive memory, yet, depending on reproductive technologies, copies of moving images may organize mass publics and influence cultural imaginaries. Traditionally considered conservative, preservation in the midst of destruction is not only a creative but also an avant-garde act of breathing new life into storytelling and the reproduction of cultural memory. In this essay, I discuss how the surrealist works of Morrison and Rocha radically confront dominant cultural imaginings of race and nation, and I argue that film preservation has the potential of being socially transformative. An interview with Gregorio Rocha follows.     

The value of a dog in a classroom of children with severe emotional disorders

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to determine how a dog's presence in a self-contained classroom of six children diagnosed with severe emotional disorders affected students' emotional stability and their learning. Across an eight-week period of time, the children were observed, the children and their parents were interviewed, and behavioral data were recorded when students went into emotional crisis. Qualitative analysis of all coded data indicated that the dog's placement in this self-contained classroom: a) contributed to students' overall emotional stability evidenced by prevention and de-escalation of episodes of emotional crisis; b) improved students' attitudes toward school; and c) facilitated students' learning lessons in responsibility, respect and empathy.     

Law and Society in Seattle: Law-Related Education as Culturally Responsive Teaching

In this article, I provide a portrait (Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and Jessica Hoffman Davis 1997) of a renowned law-related education (LRE) program, its teacher, and four of its student-participants. Following the portrait, I discuss theoretical explanations for the success of ethnic-minority students in this and other LRE programs. These explanations include the nature of law as a difficult subject, the many convergences between culturally responsive teaching and LRE, and the relation of the content and methods of LRE to the cultural capital, interests, backgrounds, and ethnic identities of the students. I conclude with a discussion of the reciprocal nature of these processes, research on white teachers who are successful in multicultural contexts, the importance of challenging, accelerated classes, and an argument for expanding research on culturally responsive teaching and the achievement of students of color to include attention to the methods and materials of LRE.     

Teaching with soap: Examples of project-based units for students and future educators

This article describes the use of project-based instruction in activities and labs intended to develop higher-order thinking skills with high school students and pre-service teachers through the use of soap making.