Vol. 26-1（2013/6）
-
A Two-Year Study on Children’s Interpretive Contexts in Responding to Picture Story Books
Fang-Wei Tai & Min-Ling Tsai
This paper presents a two-year study on picture book reading process involving a teacher and a group of children in Kinmen County. The aim was to explore how children create their interpretation of the story (the interpretive contexts applied by these children) when responding to questions posed in the discussion sessions, the teacher’s ways of participation, and other possible contextual influences. In the first year, two kindergarten teachers and 18 children read picture books together three times a week. In the second year, as children moved on to first grade, 12 of them continued to participate in monthly picture book reading sessions offered by the authors. A total of thirty audio-taped reading sessions were transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were devided by topics with every speaking turn coded. After a thorough inductive analysis, the authors constructed seven categories of children’s interpretive contexts and sorted out teacher’s ways of questioning, probing, and responding. The seven contexts in which the interpretation is drawn included life experiences, the story, common knowledge, the illustration, the author’s intention, compound contexts and others. The most frequently applied interpretive context by kindergarteners was life experiences, whereas the most frequently applied interpretive context by first-graders was the story. The interpretive contexts applied by first-graders were more diversified. Based on the long term observation, it is proposed that the reading culture and the teacher’s role contributed significantly to the development of these children’s diversified interpretive contexts. Lastly, the authors provided some practical suggestions on picture book reading activities and the analytic method for future studies.
Keyword：children, picture story books, reading together, response
-
Jenyi Chao
The objective of the nine-year integrated curriculum in Taiwan is to cultivate the ten basic competencies of students. Nations around the world have also accentuated the importance of key competencies in citizens, and it is hoped that through education, civic literacy can be enhanced. Among the basic competencies, many nations value the abilities to use technology, to be creative, and cooperative. This study investigated the development of two abilities, creativity and cooperation, in indigenous students while they learned basic mechanical concepts in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT course, which comprised nine units, during the 2010-2011 school year. Indigenous Atayal culture and teaching strategies involving collaborative problem solving were integrated into the course. The participants were 24 third graders from an elementary school serving the Atayal Tribes of Nan-ao, Ilan County. Data was collected through pretests, posttests, and classroom observations. The findings of this study are as follows. (1) The scores of the pretests and posttests indicate that the basic mechanical concepts of the students improved significantly. (2) The results of the figural Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking showed that the students improved significantly in fluency, originality, elaboration, openness, and creative potential. (3) In learning, cooperating, and the division of labor, the students were able to perform their respective duties; in discussion, problem-solving, and presentation, they required some guidance from the teacher; in reflection, assessment, and summary, the students displayed high levels of interest and creative performance.
Keyword：basic mechanical concepts, collaborative problem solving, creativity, indigenous students, LEGO Mindstorms NXT
-
Addressing Challenges in Teacher Collaborative Curriculum Design: An Activity Theory Framework
Fei-Ching Chen, Ying-Shiou Lin, & Shu-San Hsiau
The purpose of this study is to identify the difficulties encountered when teacher teams collaborate in designing school-based integrative curriculum units. Conventionally, teachers are used to accomplish tasks by dividing things into subtasks instead of doing them together. Therefore, it is expected that they encounter difficulties while working on curriculum design collaboratively. Using Activity theory as a framework, this study aimed to identify disturbances and inner contradictions in teacher collaborative curriculum-making. Instead of relying merely on interview or observation data, dialogical data were collected in regular team meetings in a junior high school in New Taipei City. Two teacher teams, the green fair unit team and the classroom electricity device unit team, were examined using the framework of activity theory. Three contradictions were discovered: first, the meaning-making of team meetings: effective versus fatigue; second, individual responsibility versus collective ownership; and third, flatter hierarchical structure of division of labors: explicitness versus ambiguity. The complexity of boundary crossing among teachers in junior high school was also discussed.
Keyword：activity theory, collegiality, contradiction, disturbance, teacher collaboration
-
Yu-Nan Su
The clash between Asian values and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights implies a crucial revelation regarding the universality and relativity of the human rights concept. Various issues on rights and obligations are notions critical to human rights education, which warrant further discussion. The concept of Asian values has not been introduced in Taiwan’s human rights education and is the subject of this study. Located in East Asia and immersed in the cultural values and traditional virtues of Confucianism, the people of Taiwan may opt to analyze the connotations of Asian values to carefully consider the order of priorities between rights and obligations, the ranking of values between economic development and human rights, and the compromise between personal freedom and communitarianism. By examining Asian values and the Confucian culture commended by these values, the concept of human rights education were revisited and re-explored.
Keyword：Asian value, Confucianism, human rights education, the philosophy of education
-
The Application of the Socratic Method in Teaching General Education Law Courses
Ling-Shuang Shih
The Socratic Method emphasizes that students obtain knowledge and test their beliefs in the process of engaging in dialogues. As general education emphasizes critical thinking, this method has much applied value, specifically in teaching law courses in general education programs. In light of different perspectives, the Socratic Method could be classified into three models: the test model, the Meno model, and the Theaetetus model. Besides, it could be classified into two approaches: the non-autocratic approach and the authoritarian approach. The Socratic Method is often adopted in the teaching at law schools in the United States. In their different experiences of studying and teaching, scholars’ views over the use of the Socratic Method in teaching the law is controversial. The approvers consider that the method is effective in teaching basic legal principles. The dissenters consider that the classroom experience is humiliating to all students. However, most scholars would agree that it depends on how well teachers implement the Socratic Method so that students may benefit from the process. Comparatively, there is also possibility that these models or approaches of the Socratic Method might be properly applied in the teaching of different law courses. In United States, the Meno model is mainly applied. Besides, for students’ understanding the application of law, teachers may adopt the authoritarian approach. For students to understand the amending of law, teachers may use the non-autocratic approach. In this article, the author introduced and analyzed his teaching of law using the Socratic Method and demonstrated how useful it has been for educating students to have deliberation ability.
Keyword：general education of law, law teaching, Socratic method, Socratic teaching
