Section archive - Theories & Approaches

This qualitative research study examined 190 concurrent education students' case-based reflections from 2005 to 2008. The participants were enrolled in their third year of a 5-year education program in an Ontario university in Canada. The article describes the use of constant comparison and theoretical saturation that identified two core categories emerging from participants' meta-cognitive analysis to describe how students internalized and interpreted the Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession. The core categories were identified as the spectrum of participants' emotional reactions and the capacity to examine circumstances in the context of professional standards.

This study describes and compares theories from multiple disciplines about how peers (classmates) influence one another. The study then compares the empirical predictions of the theories with empirical evidence about peer influences on student achievement and draws tentative conclusions about which theories are most consistent with the evidence. A new hybrid theory, group-based contagion, is proposed that seems most consistent with the evidence.

The mediation by teachers of the many activity systems that constitute any given class has traditionally been an ignored aspect of teaching. In this paper the authors argue that the teacher's responsibility for this mediation exists and must therefore be accounted for in the praxis of teaching. In addition, the authors argue for the cogenerative dialogue as one viable solution for teachers to mediate in an ethically responsive manner.

According to Hannah Arendt, the aim of education is the cultivation of the future action of students. But teaching itself does not seem to count as a form of action for Arendt, leaving us to wonder how teachers estranged from their own natality can hope to cultivate and safeguard the natality of the young. To solve this dilemma, this theoretical article shows how both teaching and action take the form of mediation. In the author’s formulation, the classroom is a theatrical space and the curriculum a reweaving of our cultural constitution.