Browsing by Author "Shapiro, Bonnie"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    An Examination of Mental Time Travel and Its Role in the Development of Foresightful/Prudential Intellect
    (2015-09-24) Parlar, Ugur; Davis, Brent; Shapiro, Bonnie
    Mental time travel (MTT) has always been a crucial component of human cognition, but has not always been identified or supported in schooling. Recent advances in psychological science consider MTT to be responsible for future-oriented thought and action, particularly, the formation of foresight. Therefore, an innovative research trajectory for education is to enabling students to harness their MTT abilities and support the development of what could be called foresightful/prudential intellect. By enhancing the flexibility and the reach of MTT ability, education can enable students to develop foresightful/prudential reasoning skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains, including the ability to carry out collaborative MTT. Some of these skills are ecological problem identification and solution, environmental decision-making, root-cause analysis, spatial reasoning, and evolutionary thinking. This thesis first examines the evolution and development of MTT by combining studies in cognitive-developmental science, biological anthropology, and evolutionary neuroscience. A secondary examination reveals that although foresightful/prudential intellect is more closely associated with cognitive self-governance, clear benchmarks for assessing and supporting this intellect via MTT tasks need to be identified. A developmental study that used a dynamic system problem illustrates the ways foresightful/prudential reasoning manifests itself. Quantitative and qualitative differences are found in school-aged children’s and undergraduate students’ episodic memory syntheses when they were asked how to prevent the problem from reoccurring. The results of this study suggest that foresightful/prudential reasoning skills in environmental topics could be extrapolated to entire classrooms by designing MTT-based learning tools or tasks. Two prominent techniques are identified to show what these tools, tasks, or techniques could involve and how they could be designed. Finally, a teacher education agenda is discussed in alignment with the goals of MTT-based learning and fostering the development of foresightful/prudential intellect. This agenda needs to be approached in stages and with a sense of urgency given the current pace of anthropogenic environmental change.
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    Bringing Environmental Identity Research into the Classroom Context
    (2017) Simms, Wendy; Shanahan, Marie-Claire; Alonso-Yanez, Gabriela; Shapiro, Bonnie; Lock, Jennifer; Varelas, Maria
    The problem guiding this doctoral research is that present-day science education does not always promote the action or ‘citizenry’ required to address local and global environmental problems. The question guiding this research, presented across three manuscripts, is how can environmental identity development be fostered in students learning within the classroom context? A theoretical review of the environmental identity literature revealed that multiple interpretations of environmental identity exist, which varied in the significance given to the social context within which identities develop. Social network analysis revealed that Clayton's (2003) interpretation of environmental identity, emphasizing emotional connections to nature and the physical context, has greatly influenced the research. However, this interpretation of environmental identity may be inappropriate for the highly social classroom context. A case study of an in-school sustainability program called Trash to Treasure (T2T) was used to qualitatively explore environmental identity development in students. Participant observations, group interviews, reflective journals, and student artifacts from 35 focus participants were collected. Eight dimensions of student environmental identity development were identified during the T2T program: the opportunity to be an environmental actor with peers, awareness of environmental threat, emotion, personal meaning, social and self-recognition for environmental action, perceived individual agency, and changed behaviour across social contexts. A framework is offered to represent how these dimensions might interact if the desired outcome is fostering a student’s capacity to take environmental action learned at school into other social contexts. The key element appears to be designing activities that provide time and space for reflection on environmental identity actions. A second case study focused more closely on how three students reflected on the T2T experiences. Inquiry reflection, emotional reflection and critical reflection all contributed to environmental identity, however critical self-reflection was notably absent. Five design strategies are offered to support educators: (1) class participation in citizen science to extend the reach of environmental action beyond school, (2) extending inquiry reflection to include problem solving, (3) creating ‘safe learning spaces’ for emotional reflection and identity navigation, (4) extending critical reflection/thinking to include critical self-reflection, and (5) supporting the ‘thickening’ of student environmental identities beyond the classroom.
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    Semiotics in education: an exploration of limits and possibilities in a science classroom context
    (1992) Groisman, Andrea L. Marcilla de; Shapiro, Bonnie
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    Stories of Teaching Force and Motion: A Narrative Inquiry into Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Science Teachers
    (2015-08-26) Azam, Saiqa; Shapiro, Bonnie
    Since the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was introduced in the 1980s, many researchers have tried to elaborate this concept. This project establishes that understanding topic-specific science PCK diverges from understanding the broader PCK construct. It provides a conceptual framework that can be used to represent both general PCK and topic-specific science PCK. The research demonstrates how this framework can serve as a heuristic to consider science teachers’ PCK. The research explored how four experienced secondary school science teachers describe their experiences of conceptualizing and teaching the topics, force and motion. The aim was to access teachers’ thinking about using content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge to teach science content. Two narrative methodologies suggested by Polkinghorne were employed: narrative analysis and analysis of narratives. Science teachers’ descriptions were developed into (a) narrative configurations that portray their PCK—stories of teaching force and motion, and (b) PCK tools—teaching, learning and assessment tools that can be used to engage pre-service science teachers to help them develop their science PCK. Participant teachers’ PCK was organized using ten teacher knowledge components: (i) knowledge of content, (ii) knowledge of student learning, (iii) knowledge of instructional strategies, (iv) knowledge of teaching resources, (v) knowledge of technology, (vi) knowledge of science curriculum, (vii) knowledge of goals, (viii) knowledge of teaching contexts, (ix) knowledge of assessment, and (x) knowledge of student diversity. Each PCK component further contains knowledge elements, which are narrative fragments—events and incidents described by participants about teaching a specific science topic, pointing to the narrative nature of PCK. Each teachers’ PCK represents their professional and practical knowledge of teaching science. Participants’ knowledge can be further considered using a four-level continuum from general to topic-specific science PCK. This shows that content knowledge understanding is integrated with the other teacher knowledge categories.
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