Search

This study aims to refine our understanding of the potential perils and possibilities of national myths for democratic history education. Previous research studies in history education have often assumed that national myths are ideological constructs serving the interests of the privileged. This study examines national myths as empty signifiers responding to students' present demands. The focus is the case of Catalonia, where nationalism has recently grown. Based on interview (14) and questionnaire (340) data collected from Catalan secondary students, my analysis suggests that national myths can be open to existing contemporary demands against a powerful Other. As such, national myths can be considered an interface where history educators can intervene. National myths, and likely other myths and countermyths, might implicitly or explicitly exclude some students whilst providing others with a collective identity capable of political action.

In this paper, Cassandra's role in the ancient Greek myth of the fall of Troy, as one given the gift of prophesy but cursed to be disbelieved, is explored with a view to understanding the apparently powerless position of climate justice and environmental activism to change public policy. To make this case, we re-interpret the myth of Cassandra to imagine her as a different kind of person, and explore the ideas and stories of certain Teme Augama Anishinaabe Elders that we believe reflect a divergent ontos (being state) from that of the global, modern West. This being state is embedded in the natural world in a constantly reciprocal and dialogical way. We couple this with parallel arguments from recent theories around the human neuro-hemispheric divide relating to ontology and use both to explore how we might become the kinds of people that are capable of dealing with climate change: Cassandras of the second kind. Viewed methodologically, this paper is a cyclical philosophical investigation that, in part, makes use of hermeneutics and narrative inquiry to understand mythic Greek tales and the stories of Indigenous Elders. It also draws on literary traditions that employ allegory to explore meaning.

The prevalent question raised in literary theories has been the quiddity of literature. However, the question of "what is literature?" is a philosophical issue. On the other hand, the relationship between myth and literature has always been raised by most scholars and many have considered literature a subtype of myths. In this paper, while pointing transiently to the concepts and definitions of myth from the perspective of the great thinkers, with a different view, the role of myth in creation of artistic works is discussed. In this review, the critic attempts to interpret the literary work--or some sources in the text--to its prototype or archetype with its deep structure. With the help of this method, tracing the old or new mythology, distorted or worn, it is understood how they have passed over the whole cultural field and have found their specific formation.

Knowing the origin of a language helps us to determine the historical background of that language. As language itself is such a system of a society that is continuously evolving as that aforementioned society learns and technologically develops along with its roots or origins. Like many other languages, English is also a language that has roots or origins in many different languages. In this sense, the English language, rooted as Anglo-Saxon, is known to derive most of its words from the Latin and Greek languages by whose modern cultures, it is assumed to be affected most. In this study, this derivation of words and the intrinsic difficulties probable to occur for English as a Foreign Language learners (hereafter EFLs) with a special interest upon the case of pluralization are scrutinized. That is why it is enlightened by the author of this paper within the scope of the historical background, the etymology of the English language within a linguistic perspective. As a result, the most common and confusing plural forms of Greek-originated English words, and some curing methods are defined.

The article reviewed the history of Rome and Attila, their influence on the political and social situation in Europe. The aim of the article is to study the origins of Rome, its crisis and destruction. It also considers the impact on the collapse of the Empire, the impact that Attila had on the destruction of Rome and the analysis of Attila as a political and military leader, his history, heritage and influence on the cultures of European and Turkic people. The article also tells about the life of the Huns. The principles of historicism, objectivism, dialectical unity of the historical and logical are applied in the article, as well as the comparative-historical and historical-analytical methods. Abstraction and generalization were applied from the general methods of scientific knowledge. The analysis of foreign and domestic historians is undertaken, and the folklore of European countries, in particular the North German and Norse tribes is considered in the article. The results of the article show social, economic and political factors that influenced the emergence and decline of Rome, describe Attila's personality as a prudent and cruel leader, and the motives that drove him like a lust for power and expansionist views. The formation of Attila as a legend contributed to European militarized tribes, as well as his pursued policy of cult of personality. The Romans endowed him with exceptional abilities to explain their own military setbacks; the church cultivated the image of Attila in order to strengthen its influence. Article supplements the historical chronology of Europe, the history of the Turkic people. The study of folklore related to Attila allows us to look into the development of literary tendencies in medieval Europe

This research investigates the problems of self-identification of the Kazakh ethnic group in the post-totalitarian period, which are based on the values of traditional nomadic life of Kazakhs. The research shows the mechanisms of evolution of the ethnic group's worldview paradigms and their typology. The purpose of the research is to investigate the national image of Kazakhs' world through the structure of their artistic thinking, based on the assumption that art plays a significant role in the formation of an ethnic group's worldview. The research found that the significant factors in the structure of the ethnic worldview are traditional art, mythopoethic notions, language, and peculiarities of the national psychology and ethics. The features of mythopoethic reflection of reality in the artistic and spiritual practice of the nation, which are recorded in monuments of national art, were studied in detail. The research analyzed the typical features of the worldview of Ancient Turks as a prototype of the ethnic worldview of Kazakhs, which had a considerable effect on the structure of the Kazakh space-and-time continuum; the cults of ancestor, life and, death worshiping, which are relevant for the Kazakh mentality, were investigated. Special attention was paid to the main worldview cult of Ancient Turks-Tengri, which has numerous manifestation in the Kazakh culture: in cosmology, artistic thinking, ornamental, music, and epic art. The analysis allowed defining the ethnic worldview and concluding that the modern Kazakh culture is a synthesis of numerous elements of various cultures, which predetermines the exogenous nature of the traditional Kazakh worldview.

Shahnameh as one of the most important literary works that reflects the pure thoughts of the past Iranians, plays a key role in preserving the Iranian cultural heritage and national identity. Mythology helps us to understand the civilizations included the cultures. For example, the image of the women in the literary works is different from their modern popular image that ignores the real position of the women. Abu ?l-Qasim Ferdowsi, the highly revered Persian poet, is one of the literary figures who considered the role of women in his literary masterpiece in spite of the prevailing attitudes towards the women in his era. Some studies, due to the lack of understanding the Ferdowsi's poems, have claimed that he is a misogynist poet. However, Ferdowsi has equally ranked men and women in his long epic. For example, there are a number of chaste and compassionate mothers in Shahnameh, who play a vital role in shaping the epic character of the heroes. Or, the women who fall in love and relinquish all her possessions for the sake of fruition, such as Manijeh and Katayun who leave the king's court for the sake of love. Ferdowsi's imagery of women is not a descriptive account of their charming superficial beauties, but it reflects the wisdom, bravery, and belligerency of these women.

One of the myth-making phenomena is lake, which has often a counterpart in reality. Regarding the possible limits of mythological lakes of Iranian "Bundahišn", sometimes their place can be found in natural geography. Iranian "Bundahišn", as one of the great works of Middle Persian (Pahlavi) language, contains a large number of mythological geography names. This paper focuses on the mythical lakes of Iranian "Bundahišn". Some of the mythical lakes are nominally comparable to the present lakes, but are geographically located in different places. Yet, in the present research attempt is made to match the mythical lakes of Iranian "Bundahišn" with natural lakes. Furthermore, they are studied in the light of etymological and mythological principles. The study indicates that mythical lakes are often both located in south and along the "Fraxkard Sea" and sometimes they correspond with the natural geography, according to the existing mythological points and current characteristics of the lakes.

Taking a lead from recent articles in "The History Teacher," the author placed history, popular culture, and historical literacy at the core of a history course entitled "Enchanted Capitalism: Myths, Monsters, and Markets." Drawing on folklore, literature, popular culture, and economics, the course explored the rise of capitalism and its relation to tales of monstrosity in England from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and the globalization of capitalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and its relation to tales of vampires and zombies from Sub-Saharan Africa, Britain, the U.S., and Japan. The course asked students to explore the relationship between capitalism and the rise of stories involving a new kind of monster-- one that is undead--and, in doing so, interrogate key symbolic registers in which capitalist commodification is experienced by people in established capitalist societies and in societies undergoing capitalist development at different times and in different places to see if there were important differences in the kinds of monsters each culture produced in folklore, literature, video, and film. This article describes historical contexts for the course, course goals and structure, teaching the course, and student engagement used to meet learning outcomes.

Heidegger argues that modern technology is quantifiably different from all earlier periods because of a shift in ethos from in situ craftwork to globalised production and storage at the behest of consumerism. He argues that this shift in technology has fundamentally shaped our epistemology, and it is almost impossible to comprehend anything outside the technological enframing of knowledge. The exception is when something breaks down, and the fault 'shows up' in fresh ways. Stiegler has several important addendums to Heidegger's thesis. Heidegger fails to fully appreciate the early Greek myth of Prometheus, and the technological depth that fire offers all human societies. The fall, or failure, is doubled in the myth of Prometheus, and is at the root of all cultures. Since the onset of Information Technology, the acceleration of life is disorientating our Being. I argue the fall in both Heidegger and Stiegler has encaptured their imagination. Education is vital for generating the imaginary, along with the ability to think critically, and ensures the authenticity of political processes, but as importantly, it helps us to imagine the future beyond the Armaggedon scenarios of climate change, and ecological devastation. The Arts and Humanities are at the core of generating a new future.

'It is the belt!' This is how middle school teachers in a science teaching professional development program rationalized why they believe Orion is the most recognizable of all constellations in the night sky. It was from this foundation that we chose Orion to be the focus of a four-phase ethnoastronomy-based project reported here. Ethnoastronomy, within this context, can be described as the study of myths as bearers of cultural knowledge from oral traditional societies (Lankford 2007 "Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America" (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press)). After identifying the stars comprising the 'belt', and the greater asterism through the singular and oversimplified lens of the Greek mythology that dominates our astronomy curricular learning objectives, we explored deeper through Ojibwe, Arab, and Jewish perspectives as these cultures and religions were represented in our group. The purpose of this paper is to share insights emanating from emergent critical questions generated in our professional development program regarding where, how, and why we should introduce traditional cultural knowledge that complements Western skylore into our classrooms towards helping to cultivate empathy for others in our community.

Fun games can generate a flow experience for players, and further increase their willingness to continue gameplay. However, an important issue that has long concerned educators and game developers is how to incorporate learning subjects into games and achieve the goal of learning through play. This study designed an English blockade-running game based on Greek and Roman mythology, and proposed a research model to predict future willingness of learners to use game-based learning with smartphones after flow experience. A total of 376 college students participated in this study. Data analysis revealed that the model achieved a good fit, and most hypotheses were supported. Finally, this study will further discuss and explain these phenomena in the educational setting, and also make suggestions for future development.

The Anishinaabe Seven Fires Creation Story can be read as a theory on which all human beings share a fundamental love of reflecting reality in what they think and do. In this article, Marc Kruse, Nicolas Tanchuk, and Robert Hamilton argue that this ethical theory is correct but that the colonial ideology taught in our schools can obscure our knowledge of this fact. Specifically, the authors claim that decolonizing education requires teaching students and teachers alike to see the presence of value whenever they encounter other beings animated by a responsiveness to reality. All living things strive to perceive and respond to reality -- to live and continue to learn -- even if epistemic faculties differ. All living things, then, the authors conclude, are rightly seen as our relatives and kin, as bearers of value to whom we owe moral respect, as Anishinaabe elders have long taught.

All over the world, among various cultures, water has always been a major concept and given a lot of attention. Many nations in different ways have delivered it in different symbolic forms. The implications given to water are based on cultural and national tendencies. Being highly important, water and its semiology has beckoned prominent poets and authors' attention and because of its great function it has been utilized in conveying those poets' intentions thereby enriching their works. In the current study, we look into the importance of water and its symbolic representation in Sohrab Sepehri's and Gibran Kahlil Gibran's works. The results show that Sohrab has used the symbolic aspects of water more than Gibran has. Sohrab's symbolism is rooted in Persian-Islamic mythology, both national and religious, thus mainly oriental in origin. On the other hand, Gibran has been influenced by the western and universal symbols of water.

This paper addresses the incidence of 'Women against Women' in Nigerian folklore. Much has been written on Nigerian folklore, but mainly from within the mortal axis, as reflected in many folktales that cut across different communities in Nigeria. However, it has been observed that this gender phenomenon extends to the supernatural realm, where gods and goddesses, especially the latter, seem to prefer members of the opposite sex as the objects of their attention and goodwill. This paper focuses on Benin mythology, with particular emphasis on the cult and festivals of the Bini goddess, Ovia. Of the origin stories of most of the gods and goddesses in Bini mythology, the "Ovia" cult is unique, as it provides a gender reason why membership is restricted to men. Adopting a psychoanalytical and feminist approach, the paper concludes that Ovia's deliberate exclusion of women re-echoes the negativity ascribed to women.

Myths are accounts of the origin of societies and institutions not subject to rationalization but often used by historians and philosophers in their quest to study African history; for it is only thus that we can comprehend the various aspects of the continent's history and culture. This paper examines the critical understanding of African worldview, the place of African philosophy and the significance of myths in the reflection of African experience.

This paper aims to investigate university students' perceptions of drama activities in terms of providing suggestions for constructing an effective drama class. A total of ten students who participated in Interactive English, an elective English course during the second semester of 2013 at a Korean university, took part in this study. The students' perceptions of the activities as written in their journals and in response to questionnaires were analyzed. The results show that the subjects perceived that (1) all the 10 activities used in the drama course improved their communication skills (2) all the 10 activities improved their confidence; (3) activities that involved Group Homework, Mantle Expert, Role Play and Nursery Rhymes enhanced students' cultural awareness of the target language; (4) awareness, competence, and thinking ability were considered effective results of a drama class. Regarding these results, it is suggested that an activity based drama course gave students the speaking opportunity to increase their confidence, the practice necessary to become self-aware, and through stories, myths and nursery rhymes, a taste of other cultures.

This research aims to prove that the mythical-metaphorical narratives from cultures in harmonic relationship with their natural environment can be considered as an educational resource within the context of education for sustainable development. Using the Earth Charter as a basis and after establishing as analysis categories the competencies that education should foster in the students from this perspective, a content analysis of 28 stories was performed. The results endorse the existing coherence between the materials analysed and the principles and values that the Earth Charter's text reflects and the relevance of these materials as educational resources within the framework of education for sustainable development.

For decades, feminists have tried to dismantle and argue against the image of the Medusa as a figure of female monstrousness. This paper claims that the celebrated British author and poet Ted Hughes, in his novella for children, The Iron Woman, redeemed the Medusa and presented her in a new light that revealed her as a victim, a healer, and a generator of lives. The Iron Woman is an eco-fable that aims at creating environmental awareness amongst teenagers and adults alike. Reading the work of Ted Hughes reveals that he is a staunch believer in the necessity of shocking his readers into truly fathoming the dangers of a deteriorating Mother Nature. This paper will develop two arguments: one concerns global environmental issues, while the second is related directly to the personal life of Ted Hughes. The first argument proposes that Hughes made extensive use of the myth of the Medusa in order to convey a universal message, that Mother Earth cannot be redeemed from humanity's insistence on destroying her unless all human beings are able to delve deep down into their psyche, stare fear in the face and own up to the fact that they are responsible for the decay that has come upon her. The Medusa here is a metaphor for humanity's fear of encountering its own dark deeds. The second argument puts forward a theory that Ted Hughes the man is also implicated in this redemption process, which cannot take place unless he too stares fear in the face and acknowledges his partial responsibility for his wife's suicide. In the second argument, the Medusa becomes a metaphor for a defiled, victimized woman--for Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide shortly after she discovered that Ted Hughes had committed adultery. In much the same manner that Hughes used to "drive through Sylvia's poems", as his poem "The City" reveals, this paper proposes that Hughes appears to have "co-authored" The Iron Woman with Plath by invoking her presence at every turn--that she was his Medusa, and that the Medusa was his muse for this particular novella. More than a muse, the Medusa was a magical healer for Hughes, who believed in the medicinal power of myths.

Philosophers of education have argued that in order for Environmental Education's goals to succeed, students must form bonds and place attachments with nature. Some argue that immersive experiences in nature will be sufficient to form such attachments. However, this may not be enough, requiring other means of motivating them for environmental stewardship. Here, I explore the role the imagination could play for helping (re)enchant students' perception of themselves-in-relationship-with nature which could support the work these educators are already doing. I explore philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical domains to begin developing a holistic vision of what imagination could contribute for human-environmental flourishing. Philosophically, I build from Martha Nussbaum's work that stories imaginatively shape our understanding of ourselves and the world, arguing that story--namely, myth--may have a unique power to enchant student's moral and ethical imaginations. I attempt to synthesise Michael Bonnett's rich 'primordial' phenomenology with what some mythologists identify as 'implicit myth'--both of which are drawing attention to the human-environmental interrelationship. Psychologically, I posit that if myth of this kind can develop a human-environmental imagination in students, it may serve to create conditions to motivate students to act for environmental stewardship. Pedagogically, I close by identifying authors who seem to embody this primordial and mythic way of being in the world, arguing that studying their writings may help educators and students cultivate this human-environmental imagination. I draw particular attention to Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry for exemplary inspiration and guidance.

This article presents a pedagogical-visual process developed in a traditional frontal-format course with a multi-identity group of students set in a large lecture hall. It examines an assignment that required students to analyze a meaningful personal photograph and connate it culturally, while internalizing visual general patterns utilizing a sharing digital forum. This activity promotes combining visual theories with relevant introspective self-expression, emphasizing multi-identities. One can relate this utilization of visual tools to Paulo Freire's approach to dialogic pedagogy, which emphasizes the relevance to learners and the shift between the personal and the cultural, helping to confront the heterogeneity of the class.

Historical pageants were important sites of popular engagement with the past in twentieth-century Britain. They took place in many places and sometimes on a large scale, in settings ranging from small villages to industrial cities. They were staged by schools, churches, professional organisations, women's groups and political parties, among others. This article draws on contemporary studies of heritage and performance to explore the blend of history, myth and fiction that characterised pageants, and the ways in which they both shaped and reflected the self-image of local communities. Pageants were important channels of popular education as well as entertainment and, although they are sometimes seen as backward-looking and conservative spectacles, this article argues that pageants could be an effective means of enlisting the past in the service of the present and future.

The publication of Noah & Eckstein's "Toward a Science of Comparative Education" (1969, Macmillan, NY) marked the beginning of an increasingly narrow research trajectory in comparative education, claiming a universality for Western knowledge and privileging scientific rationality in research. Juxtaposing the 'science' to Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland', such comparative education relegated more-than-human worlds and spiritual domains of learning -- and being -- to our collective pasts, personal childhood memories, or imaginations. How can we reorient and attune ourselves toward a Wonder(land), rather than a Science of comparative education exclusively, opening spaces for multiple ways of making sense of the world, and multiple ways of being? How can we reanimate our capacity to engage with a more-than-human world? Based on the analysis of children's literature and textbooks published during various historical periods in Latvia, this article follows the white rabbit to reexamine taken-for-granted dichotomies -- nature and culture, time and space, self and other -- by bringing the 'pagan' worldviews or nature-centred spiritualities more clearly into focus, while reimagining education and childhood beyond the Western horizon.

This paper reviewed the scientific contents in Igbo culture. Description of the Igbos who constitutes an ethnic group occupying southeastern Nigeria was made. It x-rayed the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial culture of Igbo people and identified the scientific cultural activities, which can be harnessed to meet the challenges of modern day globalization. The advent of science and science education in Igbo culture and its applications in various cultural activities of the Igbos both in the pre-literate and post-literate era were discussed. The implications of these for the development of Igbo nation were examined and recommendations were made on how the scientific cultural activities can be improved to enhance the integration of the Igbo culture into the modern-day globalization. (Contains 1 table.)

The Ju/'hoan Bushman origin myth is depicted as a contextual frame for their healing and transformative ways. Using Recursive Frame Analysis, these performances are shown to be an enactment of the border crossing between First and Second Creation, that is, pre-linguistic and linguistic domains of experience. Here n/om, or the presumed creative life force, is infused into the community. As the Ju/'hoan Bushmen struggle to maintain their way of life in the face of economic and political change, they are likely to increasingly come into contact with social service and other aid programs. Any future for social work with the Bushmen is served by an understanding of how they relate to n/om. In particular, supporting Bushman communities requires highlighting the importance of the way changing forms arise in their recurrent mythological border crossings, the heart of Bushman transformative experience. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

Building on Ndofirepi's plea for an approach to teaching philosophy to high-school learners in Africa that is a hybrid of western and African thought, I argue that a critical touchstone is needed if the traditional wisdom is to be sifted, and that this can be found in the idea of the questioning and responsible subject. Traditional proverbs and myths, whether African or not, reveal a growing sense of responsibility but philosophy, I argue, can contribute the principle of non-contradiction and the foundational norm of responsibility. The principle and the norm can be found to be at the heart of the modern scientific enterprise and can in principle ground a dialogue between African traditional and modern European value-systems.

Medical myth-busting is a common health education strategy during which a health educator highlights common misconceptions about health and then presents evidence to refute those misconceptions. Whereas this strategy can be an effective way to correct faulty health beliefs held by young adults, research from the field of cognitive psychology suggests that normal age-related changes in cognition may diminish the educational efficacy of medical myth-busting for older adults. In the coming years, health educators are going to have increasing numbers of older adult clients. Although health educators are often trained to understand how age-related disease processes affect older adult clients' ability to learn and remember, currently there is little emphasis placed on teaching health educators how normal aging impacts their clients' cognition. We hope that by detailing how normal cognitive aging can reduce the efficacy of a common patient education strategy, we motivate health educators to learn more about how their clients' normal age-related changes in cognition might demand modified educational approaches.

This essay is a response to a question about school desegregation in Nova Scotia, Canada posed by my sister in 2008. I argue that the question itself illustrates the extent to which critical analysis of the politics of race in Canadian schools, particularly in rural areas, is seldom taken up. This feeds into a persistent mythology of a racially integrated, benevolent Nova Scotia where nasty problems of race were taken care of in the historic past. The reality in many rural regions of Canada is, I argue, quite the opposite and it may be precisely the friendly, homespun imagery which support the persistence of exclusive educational and social practices, as well as persistent regional economic disadvantage. It is in these apparently non-diverse places that diversity education is perhaps most desperately needed.

Despite knowing about the dangers of hearing loss, farmers typically choose not to protect their hearing. Examining the myth of farm life, this study aims to discern whether rhetorical myths influence farmers' decisions to wear hearing protection. Researchers conducted 40 interviews with farmers regarding farm life and hearing loss. Results suggest that farmers typically do not use hearing protection; their answers reflect the myths of sacrifice and safety. Analysis demonstrates that knowledge of the relationship between myth and practice should impact future attempts to change farmers' behaviors. (Contains 1 table.)

For tens of thousands of years, teachers have used stories to promote learning. Today's teachers can do the same. In particular, we can employ Joseph Campbell's "monomyth"--with its stages of separation, initiation, and return--as a model for structuring learning experiences. Within the monomyth, one tempting role for teachers is the sage, but we should resist this temptation. Instead we should acknowledge, and benefit from, our role as tricksters. To do so is to accept and illuminate the dual responsibility of the teacher as both supporter and challenger.

Investigating children's pop cultures that rely on myth-making provide understandings about how children are active agents in the socialization into cultural and moral practices in their everyday lives. An annual visit to Santa Claus is important in children's pop culture in the Western world, however, the social practices associated with the continuation of the myth are under-reported. Drawing on the related methodologies of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, this article examines video-recordings of children talking to Santa at a North American shopping mall. An inherent problem for Santa across the interactions is how to talk about the children's wished-for item without actually promising the gift. Analyses show that Santa manages this problem through the design of his turn and responses, which allows him to mitigate and propose why certain items might not be delivered. Despite the infrequency of the interaction between Santa Claus and a child, a visit to Santa highlights the interplay between child, adult and societal agendas. Findings presented focus on how culture-in-action is produced through the resources of conversation and permeating cultural practices.

Whilst historically there has been a widespread consensus that teaching grammar has no impact on students' attainment in writing, more recent research suggests that where a functionally oriented approach to grammar is meaningfully embedded within the teaching of writing, significant improvements in writing can be secured. A recent study, using a functionally oriented approach, which found a statistically significant positive effect of such an approach, also found that the approach appeared to benefit higher attaining writers more than lower attaining writers. The study reported here set out to investigate specifically whether functionally oriented approach to teaching grammar in the context of writing might support less proficient writers. A quasi-experimental design was adopted, repeating the principles of the parent study but with the intervention adapted to meet the identified writing needs of less proficient writers. The statistical analysis indicated a positive effect for the intervention group (p < 0.05), and an effect size of 0.33 on students' Sentence Structure and Punctuation. The study demonstrates that explicit attention to grammar within the teaching of writing can support learners in developing their writing, but taken with the parent study, it also highlights that pedagogical choices need to be well matched to writers' needs.

Professor Kazamias has argued that comparative education has lost its "soul," by abandoning its historical and humanist episteme in the first half of the 20th century and turning to an ahistorical and nonhumanist social science today. This essay takes the readers on a journey across time and space in search of comparative education's "soul," briefly encountering a goddess in Greek mythology, a witch in medieval Europe, Alice in Wonderland, and Donna Haraway in the Chthulucene.

AI proponents possessed a seemingly odd predilection to tell stories about times in which no stories are or will be told. Their stories cover a range of time that exceeds that of human experience, beginning with a kind of creation myth about competing songs that are parasitic on the behavior of apes to trajectories of progress in which Man is finally superseded by Machine. AI researchers, funders, and enthusiasts attempt to redefine fundamental social and political concepts of intelligence, meaning, and agency. Their redefinitions emphasize a calculating, controlling, one-dimensional form of rationality, serving to legitimize and extend the power of an already powerful elite. AI theorists ignore the social ground of intelligence, the connection between their computers and the world, and most importantly, the connection between society and their own work. If we accept their claims as true, then their definitions re-order and restructure the social spaces we inhabit. (Contains 3 notes.)

This article examines historical imagery of the teacher in relation to a story drawn from ancient Greece: that relating to the teacher of the mythic hero Achilles in The Iliad. The article explores the possibility that this early image of a teacher--the aging warrior Phoenix--could be a source for later representations of the teaching function. In an effort to place this historical image into a larger context of cultural symbolism relating to pedagogy, the article asks, why is this "first" educator a man? By what narrative procedure was a man contrived to assume roles such as nurturing and childrearing that had always been (and continue to be) represented as feminine occupations? Using the work of Luce Irigaray, the article raises issues about the sex of the teacher in order to disrupt the seemingly obvious sex-neutrality of modern images of education, which define teaching and learning as humanistic, as social and cultural practices for which gender is irrelevant, and through which abstract disciplines such as literacy and numeracy are represented as transcending the physicality of the sexed body. It attempts to expose the constant deference modern educators unconsciously pay to patriarchal models of the pedagogical relationship, and to reveal the repression of sexual difference at the core of the mythology from which Western images of education have been generated.

Becoming a teacher is hard work. A sizable body of research indicates that student teaching internships or other field-based practica are a particularly difficult part of this process. Many preservice teachers have misconceptions about the work of teachers and teaching; when they begin their field placements they often feel disillusioned by the contrast between their idealized images and the realities of the profession. As they experience the myriad challenges of classroom life, preservice teachers often call into question the ideas and skills they were taught in their university coursework. Further, the numerous stressors linked with student teaching--expectations, role clarification, conformity, time, evaluation, assignments, peer discussions, feedback--contribute to making field experiences arduous and overwhelming. One of the tasks of teacher educators is to create educational contexts and opportunities that support and sustain their students as they navigate these difficult times. One successful strategy toward this end is the use of metaphor. In this article, the author shares the results of a recent study that explored the ways in which the hero's journey metaphor offered support to a cohort of preservice elementary school teachers during their first field placement experience. Because "the hero is a universal ideal that helps people think about their lives in a more profound and creative way" and because the hero's journey's emphasizes transformation and growth, the hero's journey is an appropriate and potentially powerful metaphor for nascent teachers. This study revealed that the hero's journey metaphor was helpful to the students in a range of ways. However, the author also found that many participants who enjoyed thinking of their experience as a hero's journey were resistant to the image of the hero. She describes the benefits her students experienced as a result of using the hero's journey metaphor as a way to view their field placement experience, examines the contradictions in the students' responses to this metaphor, and concludes by discussing implications of these findings for teacher education program development. (Contains 3 notes.)

In this article, the author describes "Feminist Approaches to the Classics," a course she teaches at Cleveland State University. The goal of this particular course was to situate the context of western indigenous myth in relation to western classical literature and to indicate possible reasons for its reclamation in contemporary American culture. Specifically, she and her class examined and explored the myth of the Amazon as it first appeared in western civilization. They looked at how contemporary feminists have reclaimed that myth, and then explored the possible remnants of indigenous matriarchal myth in classical literature not usually read with that purpose until the development of feminist classical criticism. The author relates that her method in teaching this course has always been very student-centered and based on constructivist practices of pedagogy. A syllabus of the course is also presented in this article.

Some scholars believe that humankind has inherited a collective responsibility of creating a peaceful new global social reality and to nurture the construction of planetary consciousness. However, a group of realist scholars with a critical disposition toward globalization emerged, and begun analyzing globalization objectively as an empirical sociological phenomenon. In this article, the author claims that the notion of globalization, as a result, has become increasingly entrenched in issues of a new post-internationalism. (Contains 1 figure.)