Reis, Giuliano Pagy Felipe dos

On and off school ground a discursive approach to science and environmental education.

Victoria

2007

Ph. D. University of Victoria (B.C.). Department of Curriculum and Instruction.2007

9780494412060

0494412062

This dissertation is the result of a two-year ethnographic study conducted with schoolteachers, students, and public educators in Victoria, British Columbia. Using discourse analysis (DA) as a method and theory to analyze participants' talk during interviews and other interactions in the course of their naturally occurring school-related activities, the present dissertation describes and articulates curricular and instructional implications of the observed practices to science classrooms and environmental education initiatives. The use of DA as analytical tool and the general significance of the findings to science and environmental education are what bring the individual chapters, originally written for different journal audiences, into cohesive focus. Data collection took place within two different instructional and institutional instances (or activity systems): In- and out-of schools. This, in turn, allowed for a more refined understanding of the issues those crossing the boundaries between the different activity systems might face, a point often overlooked in educational research. The conclusions amount to the complementary aspect of non-school and in-classroom activities for the improvement of science and environmental learning and instruction. Moreover, they expand the knowledge about the ways science and environmental education can be enacted in those learning settings, also introducing an alternative approach to the investigation of the learning processes in this two overlapping educational fields.

Supervisory committee

Abstract

Table of Contents

List of Tables

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 On a theoretical framework with personality

Chapter 3 Environmental Education in action:vA discursive approach to curiculum design

Chapter 4 When fun is not fun: Pupil's discourse on fieldtrips and the implications for science teaching

Chapter 5 Public understanding of science and newspapers: A framework of analysis in/for school science

Chapter 6 Uncertainty as a context and a resource for changing traditional questioning behavior: An argument for science education

Chapter 7 A feeling for the environment: The place of emotions in the pedagogy of public environmental education

Chapter 8 Conclusion?

References

Appendix

↑ http://hdl.handle.net/1828/237