Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Inquiry-Based Learning in the General Education and Inclusion Science Classroom

This study sought to apply the concepts of inquiry-based learning by increasing the number of laboratory experiments conducted in two science classes, and to identify the challenges of this instruction for students with special needs. Results showed that the grades achieved through lab write-ups greatly improved grades overall.

Flanerie: A post -reflexive mode of urban research inquiry

Urban ethnographic studies in social science usually proceed from within a pre-figured research framework that guides field activity and filters what is considered see-worthy and study-worthy to those phenomena which are in some way necessary for the fulfillment of specific research agendas. Reliance on formalized ethnographic research methods to explore the city, and the reflex to intellectualize that which is observed by using them, frequently leads to the neglect of much of what comprises the ethnographic richness of city-life through an overly-contemplative intellectuocentrism. ^ Flânerie, an avocational, proto-sociological ethnographic mode of urban exploration and observation originating in early-nineteenth-century Paris, is representative of an alternate approach to exploration and study of the city—one less subject to a compressed horizon of ethnographic experience. It affords insight into a broad range of phenomena taking place in interstitial urban space and time which often escape the instrumentally overly-determined gaze of professionalist research inquiry. ^ The present work addressed the fact that the concept of flânerie , though occasionally invoked in discussions of methodology in urban sociology and cultural studies, had not been subjected to a systematic attempt to relate it to the research methods of these disciplines. Though as a typological figure the flâneur is thought to have disappeared long ago, practices represented by the concept continue to be engaged in by persons inside and outside of academia who approach city life and social science with a perspective somewhat transcending the reified dichotomies of private-professional and art-and-science. This study transferred aspects of the experience of the city embodied in the flâneur to the realm of ethnographic urban studies and the building of grounded social theory, finding flânerie to be crucial to the development of a refined knowledge of urban life, and an important means by which previously overlooked social phenomena and silenced avenues of research inquiry might be exposed. ^ The conclusions reached found a “flâneuristic” approach to the city as being beneficial to research practice and the vitalization of urban ethnographic inquiry, by affording opportunities for exposure to, and immersion within, an expanded range of quotidian social phenomena that have frequently escaped the academicist gaze. ^

Curriculum development in a heritage language community-based school: A Qualitative inquiry regarding a Brazilian-Portuguese program in South Florida

This research aimed to describe, understand, and discuss the curriculum development process of a Brazilian-Portuguese heritage language community-based school in South Florida. This study was guided by the following research questions: (a) What roles does this HL community-based school aim to play for its students? This investigation was also related to the subsidiary question: (b) How does this HL community-based school organize its curriculum development process? In order to explore these research questions, I observed and interviewed teachers and coordinators based on a qualitative research approach. I analyzed the interviews’ transcripts, and the program’s website with a central focus of describing and understanding their curriculum development process. Hopefully, the findings will help Brazilian and other HL community schools toward discussing and elaborating their own curriculum development, as well as to look for specific teacher training courses.