Parfitt's 'Guest Editorial Transfiguring Transformational Teaching'

Murray is insightful not only to instructors but also to learners. Murray argues that the challenge facing writing is the fact that teachers have treated it as a product rather than a process and the same concept passed on to students. The author holds that the main problem with this view is that students get to receive irrelevant criticisms that are not related to their learning goals. While I tend to agree with the author based on the arguments presented, it is notable that Murray has paid little attention to the idea of education in the contemporary world. In most learning institutions, the outcome of the writing is considered more than the process. As a teacher paying attention to the process of writing but not be consistent with the students, who are mostly driven by

The Christian faith is pluralistic, meaning, “There [are] as many ways to love God as there [are] Christian souls” (Salzman, 2000, p.77). This reaches greater complexity when considering the impact of neuropsychology on the Christian faith. People experience God in a plethora of ways, but what about seemingly brain induced experiences?

The writing Revolution is written by Peg Tyre, who is the director of strategy at the Edwin Gould Foundation. He describes an education reform the occurred at Dorp High School, a school which otherwise may have been closed due to poor academic performance. The school's leader, Deirdre DeAngelis, drastically reformed the school’s curriculum and teaching methodology. The faculty, using DeAngelis’ methods, achieved significant success in improving their student’s academic achievements. They did so by focusing on the fundamentals: analytical and structured writing. In the article, Tyre describes the case of

In their paper “Spielraum and Teaching,” Roth, Lawless, and Masciotra claim that the concept of reflection-in-action, as articulated by Donald Schon (1983, 1987), is only minimally applicable to teaching. Teachers must be “present” to their students, and the unfolding teaching situation in a way that leaves little room for one-the-spot reflection. In this review of their paper, we acknowledge that the authors make important points about the need or flexibility and responsiveness in teaching. However, we argue that Schon’s concept of reflection-in-action is indeed relevant to the practice of teaching. Not only are teachers capable of extensive reflection while they teach, such reflection is essential if they are to make the adjustments required by attentive teaching.

He then goes on to give a detailed outline on the history of Christianity and psychology along with science and religion. Entwistle (2010) uses chapter four to discuss worldviews, as they “shape how we understand our experiences in the world, and reflect our expectations about life” (p.

Chapter three of Curtis Hayes, Robert Baruth, and Carolyn Hayes’ Literacy con Cariño mainly focuses on Robert’s tactics and the type of conversation he and the students had within their dialogue journals. What began as insecurity and reluctance from his students quickly transformed into lengthy entries about their families, struggles, likes, dislikes, feelings, and so much more. Robert was careful not to correct any mistakes he found in their writing for fear of discouraging them once again. He knew that what held them back was the fear of failure, which is why he made failing the dialogue journals impossible. Instead of pointing out their mistakes and deducting points, he simply attempted to input the correct version of those words in his responses.

Just as the title describes, Entwistle explains within the book the attempts and varied approaches of integrating both psychology and Christianity, two entities which seem to have been at odds with each other since the time of Galileo. By explaining key historical conflicts, such as instances of friction between religion and science, readers are able to understand how psychology and Christianity are intertwined, and how the same principles that hold them together also seek to push them apart. As said best by Entwistle,

Christians have a unique situation with being involved with psychology. Psychology and faith are hard to fit together. Throughout this paper, how psychology and Christianity can be used together is discussed. Personally, before even starting to study psychology as an academic study, this student had experience with Christian psychology. Christianity and psychology can work together, but some aspects of psychology are not able to be fit with Christianity.

Albert Einstein, famed psychist, offered scientific research that startled fundamentalists and excited modernists. The huge influence the reject God was largely responsible of famed psychist, Albert Einstein. His contributions in science left individuals unsure about the past and curious about the future. Einstein theorized that “space, time, matter, and energy were not distinct” (Shi and Tindall 799). His research left many to embrace the idea that there “were no absolute standards or fixed points of reference in the world” (Shi and Tindall 799) . What was once said that God created all was questioned with Einstein’s research. Another man’s research in psychoanalysis questioned the morals and the way that people carried out their lives in the 1920s. Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst from Europe, heavily influenced Americans because of his teachings about sex and behavior. Freud believed that “the mind was essentially and mysteriously “conflicted” by often unconscious efforts to control or repress powerful irrational impulses or sexual desires” (Shi and Tindall 799). His work gave life a deeper meaning and influenced sexual liberation. Writers expressed their art through dreams and imaginations. The new revelations bought on by Einstein and Freud changed the way of life for both modernists and fundamentalists. Modernists applied the news ideas by applying them into their life by expressing themselves through art, rejecting the bible, and imagine about the unknown. Fundamentalists stuck to traditional values and believed in God. The new revelations weren’t enough for fundamentalists to question their

Throughout this last semester, I have been student teaching at Shawswick Middle School where I was able to take a critical look at myself as an educator. Though the teacher and I did not see eye to eye, this disagreement helped me to better form my own pedagogical beliefs and establish confidence in myself as an educator.

Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith is a formidable case in favor of Christian theism from the ground-up covering all major evidences along with responses to common objections. In chapter 17: “The Uniqueness of Humanity,” Groothuis develops the challenge that consciousness and cognition constitute for materialism and proposes arguments in favor of biblical substance dualism. The relationship between mind and brain remains a mystery explicable in a theistic worldview. Ironically, scientific descriptions of reality in terms of matter require and presuppose consciousness, given that scientists construct these descriptions! The conundrum for the materialist is that he/she has to be able to explain thoughts and truth via

In Robinson’s Humanism, Science, and the Radical Expansion of the Possible she discuss many things, but most importantly neuroscience. The writing begins with her understanding of Humanism and where it originated and grew. She then goes on to talk about science, particularly neuroscience. This is when she starts to explain her argument that no matter how far science goes no one will ever know how life is experienced from anyone else’s point of view but their own. In today’s world, the technology is the best it has ever been and because of this science can go further into the mind then ever imagined but it will never go far enough to know how a person feels. She then brings up that science makes the reason for a god smaller and smaller as time

of Transformation: The Change Process of an Elementary-School Teacher in a Practitioner Research Group” By Amy Vetter.

In the interview, “The Writing Classroom as a Laboratory for Democracy,” Brown a co-editor of the Higher Education Exchange sought out Professor Don Rothman from UCSC to explore Rothman’s passion for teaching writing. Exploring a solution on how to restore one’s role in a public debate, Rothman motivates his students to “take certain kinds of risks and making sure that they understand how much is actually at stake in their learning to sustain conversation on issue about which we disagree”(Brown 44). Rothman explains that going along with the bandwagon risks losing a learning opportunity. Disagreeing to facilitate debate allows one to become aware of silencing “other people when we really need their insights”(Brown 45) for feedback. Therefore,

The question of what to teach and how to teach it arises when McCourt sees that writing paragraphs has minute relevance to the lives of teenagers at a technical high school. During this time he meets parents that have grown up in “traditional households” which have shaped their “traditional opinions” about what should be taught in