David W. Jardine

Deviance, Resistance, and Play: A Study in the Communicative Organization of Trouble in Class

ABSTRACTThis article provides a brief examination of contemporary sociological conceptions of “deviance” and “resistance” in the study of youth culture, and an exploration of the applicability of a notion of “play” or “playfulness” to the understanding of disruptive behavior in a classroom setting. Following the work of James Heap, we examine a transcription of a particular lesson sequence, paying special attention to what we term the “asides” developed by certain class members. We contend that these asides remain linked to the Elicitation-Response-Feedback structure of the official lesson, and that they bear a provocative descriptive affinity to some of the structural characteristics of “play.” We use this descriptive affinity to raise the question of the significance of interpreting these behaviors as “playful” rather than “deviant.”

In these shoes is the silent call of the earth" : Meditations on curriculum integration, conceptual violence, and the ecologies of community and place

How about the spirals in Starry, Starry Night [sic] and the sunflowers [sic] in picture of same name? Both can be connected to math and/or science. Spiralling procedures can be written in Logo teaching the concept of stepping. Estimations of number of sunflowers in head as well as patterns created by seeds while still in head are other ideas. You could sprout sunflower seeds and collect data: How many days average to sprout? What percentage of seeds sprouted? Does size of seeds affect sprouting speed? etc., etc. Sounds like an interesting unit. (Lugone, 1996)

“Disproportion, monstrousness, and mystery”: Ecological and ethical reflections on the initiation of student-teachers into the community of education

Abstract This paper begins with a brief description of some features of initiation rites as described by Victor Turner. This is used to suggest ways of understanding some of the experiences of student teachers facing their first practicum experience. Students often come to view their lived-experience of the world and their loving relationships with children as unreliable and turn towards an increasing literalism, demanding that teaching be recast into explicit, univocal rules and that our relations with children be rendered into controllable and manageable “object-relations.” With such a turn, the ethos of the community of teaching (along with its ecological character) is disrupted. It is suggested that student-teacher education has some of the character of “initiation into a community” — an initiation, so to speak, back into our living relations with children and with what we teach — and therefore our task as teacher educators can be considered deeply ethical and ecological at its heart.

Relentless writing and the death of memory in elementary education

This paper explores the relentless character of writing in elementary education. We begin with the reflections of a Grade Three teacher on incidents in her classroom regarding writing and the leaving of traces, followed with a consideration of the deep cultural investment we have in leaving such traces. A brief examination of the latest work by Lucy Calkins is followed by a discussion of the paradoxical relations between writing, remembering and forgetting and the forging of community as an “order of memories.” The issue of writing as the rendering of experience into cultural capital is followed by concluding remarks on the pleasures of “walking around unwritten.”

“(there, in the midst of things, his whole family listening),”

In our class on interpretive inquiry, we spoke once of how many of us have small objects placed just so in our homes or offices or tucked away in dresser drawers, or objects carried as a child or carried once by one’s child or mother or friend, objects that hold the power of our finding them or the faces and hands of those who gave them to us or left them behind, objects that can never be fully explained to anyone else, because the circumstances of their arrival can never quite add up for anyone else, except, sometimes, in the near-mute recognition that I, too, have one of those myself, embarrassed as I am at the thought of it. I brought to the class a small, cracked copper-plate circle graced with engraved, descending cranes that I found buried under over a foot of soil in the backyard of my former home in Guelph, Ontario. Carried here to this new place. Placed in my office. Visible. Taking up hardly any of my attention. What an oddly striking thing. How unlike so much of the disposable material in this room.

Wabi Sabi and the Pedagogical Countenance of Names

These considerations began with our discovery of a new picture book entitled Wabi Sabi, written by Mark Reibstein with stunning artwork (“collages” made from “a collection of timeworn human-made as well as natural materials” [cited from the inside back cover]) by Ed Young.

CHAPTER 10: The First Thunder Clap of Spring

ABSTRACT In this chapter, we explore some of the affinities that can be developed between new information and communication technologies and what has become known as aboriginal ways of knowing. This work documents some of these affinities via the collaborative development of an online project entitled “Nitsitapiisini—Stories and Spaces: Exploring Kainai Plants and Culture,” conducted with teachers, students, and elders of the Blood Tribe in southern Alberta. The pedagogy of this collaboration is then linked to rethinking the disciplines ofknowledge entrusted to teachers and students in schools as living disciplines that make demands on the possibilities inherent in new technologies. This particular orientation tubs against instructionist practices found in many classrooms yet, once awakened, spawns curiosity and creativity.