by Oliveira, Alandeom W.; Colak, Huseyin; Akerson, Valarie L.

We would like to thank our commentators Reis, Ercikan and Alper for their insightful comments on our research study and respond in brief to a few of their criticisms. More specifically, we would like to address what we consider to be the three main issues they raise with regard to the practices of curriculum translation and implementation across languages, namely viewing speakers’ intentions as a mode of signification in discourse analysis, exploring curriculum translation through an interpretive research approach, and establishing the validity of research on curriculum translation.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-008-9104-2
Online Date: 2/29/2008
Print publication date: 3/1/2009
View article on SpringerLink

The Feature Focus Forum to be selected from Volume 2 Issue 3 is Learning without belief-change?
In this Forum, Michael H.G. Hoffman raises some questions in relation to El-Hani and Mortimer’s central thesis that science education should “avoid” the idea of changing students’ beliefs and explores the necessity of enabling students to be able to participate in discourse that both challenges their beliefs as well as their teachers’ beliefs. In response, El-Hani and Mortimer engage in a refocused discussion of some of Hoffman’s key arguments.

*Note For ease of access, the feature focus article and forum are available in the same PDF download. Hoffman’s contribution to the Forum begins on page 32 of the document and the response by El-Hani and Mortimer begins on page 39 of the document. Click on title of Forum to access PDF.

Michael H.G. Hoffman Michael H. G. Hoffmann is Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology (e-mail: m.hoffmann@gatech.edu). His research interests include semiotic and epistemological foundations of learning theories and of conflict research theories. His recent publications include ‘Signs as means for discoveries. Peirce and his concepts of ‘‘Diagrammatic Reasoning,’’ ‘‘Theorematic Deduction,’’
‘‘Hypostatic Abstraction,’’ and ‘‘Theoric Transformation’’’ (2005); ‘How to Get It. Diagrammatic Reasoning as a Tool of Knowledge Development and its Pragmatic Dimension’ (2004); and ‘Learning from people, things, and signs’ (2007).

The Feature Focus article to be selected from Volume 2 Issue 2 is Multicultural education, pragmatism, and the goals of science teaching.

*Note For ease of access, the feature focus article and forum are available in the same PDF download. Click on title of article to access PDF.

ABSTRACT In this paper, we offer an intermediate position in the multiculturalism/universalism debate, drawing upon Cobern and Loving’s epistemological pluralism, pragmatist philosophies, Southerland’s defense of instructional multicultural science education, and the conceptual profile model. An important element in this position is the proposal that understanding is the proper goal of science education. Our commitment to this proposal is explained in terms of a defense of an ethics of coexistence for dealing with cultural differences, according to which social argumentative processes—including those in science education—should be marked by dialogue and confrontation of arguments in the search of possible solutions, and an effort to (co-)live with differences if a negotiated solution is not reached. To understand the discourses at stake is, in our view, a key requirement for the coexistence of arguments and discourses, and the science classroom is the privileged space for promoting an understanding of the scientific discourse in particular. We argue for “inclusion” of students’ culturally grounded ideas in science education, but in a sense that avoids curricular multicultural science education, and, thus, any attempt to broaden the definition of “science” so that ideas from other ways of knowing might be simply treated as science contents. We expect this paper can contribute to the elaboration of an instructional multicultural science education approach that eliminates the forced choice between the goals of promoting students’ understanding of scientific ideas and of empowering students through education.

Charbel Nin˜o El-Hani is Professor of History, Philosophy, and Biology Teaching at the Institute of Biology, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil, and Researcher of the CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development). He is affiliated with the Graduate Studies Programs in History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching (Universidade Federal da Bahia and Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana) and in Ecology and Biomonitoring (Universidade Federal da Bahia). His research interests are in science education research, philosophy of biology, biosemiotics, and animal behavior.

Eduardo F. Mortimer is Professor of Education at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil and Researcher of the CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development). He is a former high school chemistry teacher. His research interests focus on science learning, classroom discourse and professional development of science teachers. He is President of the Brazilian Science Education Research Association (2005–2009), editor of ‘‘Educac¸a˜o em Revista’’, a Brazilian journal of educational research, and member of editorial boards of Brazilian and international journals in education and science education.

by Reis, Giuliano

The present is a commentary on the article authored by Oliveira, Colak, and Akerson; and as such, it should provoke readers to re-consider the study from a different perspective, one that does not prescribe any intentionality to participants’ discourse. It is also my contention that students and teachers should be treated as co-constitutives of their interactions—which, in turn, represent the concrete realization of types of interactional possibilities that are available to them in the cultural milieu of their schools and other shared social practices. Put differently, the work of the three authors should be considered as a description and articulation of different strategies to perform the same prescribed activity and the possible implications of these to the development of in-classroom instruction in the context of science and environmental education. I conclude by stating that a different set of research questions and analytical stand would have indicated a more efficient and appropriate use of the data collected. Finally, the article’s content is sometimes at odds with itself, neglecting the same cultural aspects it claims to consider relevant for the analyses presented.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-008-9105-1
Online Date: 2/23/2008
Print publication date: 3/1/2009
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