After reviewing the debate about public sociologies in the American Sociological Association over the past few years, we offer a response to calls for "saving sociology" from the Burawoy approach as well as an analytic critique of the former ASA president's "For Public Sociology" address. While being sympathetic to the basic idea of public…

To benefit from reflective and reflexive actions there is a need to contrast these two terms to understand what each is and is not. Both terms can indicate a level and concern for self-development. For instance, to be reflexive is to self-examine, to consider internal conversation, and use this voice to guide, support, and enhance work.…

In this paper, I take up a discussion of what philosophic method is, and why it should be viewed as an important qualitative research method. After clarifying the nature of philosophic method within the larger framework of social practices, I argue that philosophy is important to both practice and research, and I suggest that philosophers work in…

Classes of undergraduate and graduate students assigned to three professors were used to experience cooperative learning, jigsaw strategies, and to reflect on the process that occurred over a semester. The work is based upon theories of social interdependence, cognitive development, and behavioral learning. Pre- and post surveys were completed by…

This layered account of arts education is produced through the three authors' critical reflections of experiences in their own early childhood education, and their pre-service teacher education. The first layer establishes links between the arts, learning in the arts and critically reflective practices through an account of teaching and learning…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of peer-generated feedback versus visual feedback in inspiring preservice physical education teachers to produce reflections that are more critical than technical. The participants were junior-, senior-, and graduate-level health and physical education majors enrolled in an instructional…

Approaching reflection from the perspective of a teachable skill set implies that research may inform how to help students reflect. Employing a framework of making connections often used in reading comprehension, this study aimed to characterize how making connections between the service-learning experience (SLE) and prior experiences in similar…

In examining their elementary teacher education program at James Madison University, from their mission to the curriculum and program delivery, the authors used the opportunity to focus explicitly on peace education. The mission and content of teacher education programs are determined largely by the faculty of the institutions of higher education…

The purposes of this study are to discuss the visionary instructional planning through the social process as school wide faculty collaboration and prepare teachers through their identity connections of graduate reading application. The discussion exemplifies four collaborative instructional teams from Honduras Elementary School, Houma, Louisiana,…

This paper describes a new digital technology to support emotional self-awareness and empathy, called G.I.R.L.S (Girls Involved in Real Life Sharing). The system invited users to reflect actively upon and interact with a dialogue about how the story made them feel through the construction of pictorial narratives. In a pilot study with teenage…

This article presents a written assignment designed to achieve several goals. First, it offers students the chance to identify and examine the "pre-understandings" with which they enter the class, and to consider how these were formed. Once they have been elaborated, these "pre-understandings" inform the instructor and the student about biases and…

In this paper, we suggest that self-organized learning can be supported through emergent and informal Web technologies and propose that these technologies can be used to encourage similar practices in higher education. Self-organized learning aims at increasing individual control over instructional functions through a process that involves…

Background: Cole and Knowles (2000) suggest that making sense of experiences and understanding personal-professional connections are the essence of professional development. These researchers posit that through personal life-history exploration, teachers make known implicit theories, values, and beliefs that underpin teaching and being a teacher.…

This study examines narrative inquiry as a vehicle of empowerment for teacher-researchers living in a multicultural society. The study focuses on the personal, academic, and professional impact of narrative inquiry. In this qualitative study, which constitutes research on research, the participants were graduate students, all experienced teachers,…

Background: Research about sport pedagogy has recently emerged as a significant interest in student reflective practice within the PE teaching/learning system. This learning process is considered as a type of knowledge of co-construction in action. This epistemological assumption postulates that the "knowledge-in-action" is the result of an active…