Dr. Kathy L. Schuh
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Making Meaning by Making ConnectionsMaking Meaning by Making Connections documents those first links that students make between content they learn in their classrooms and their prior experiences. Through six late-elementary school case studies these knowledge construction links are brought to life, describing who these individuals are, where they are in their learning process, and what is meaningful to them. The resulting grounded theory is presented through a rich and extensive presentation of excerpts from classroom observations, student interviews, and a student writing activity and describes the varying types of student links, how the links were prompted, the relationships between what the students were learning and what they already knew, and specific types of in-school links. The narrative includes how these links were supported or inhibited in the classroom drawing on the roles of the teachers in the classrooms and what constituted authority sources of information in those classrooms. The text ends by considering students’ linking as a process of ongoing semiosis and how this process is part of a dynamic system.
The book has been organized in a way to allow a number of different audiences to explore this linking process. For those interested in theoretical descriptions of how knowledge may be constructed and meaning made, this book uses a semiotic (although naïve) lens, drawing on the mind as rhizome metaphor, but also includes comparisons to more cognitive lenses of how learning takes place. For those individuals who are interested in the applied nature of the studies, omitting the sections that are more theoretically laden should not inhibit usefulness of the book and understanding of the cases. For teaching practitioners and those who train teachers, the book provides rich cases about classrooms that are diverse in instructional methods. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9789402409918 (just an FYI - if your library has the Springer e-book collection, the book is easy to access and if you would ever have need for a hard copy, paperback copies are available through that link.) |