They say a man can never step in the same river twice. It won’t be the same river, and he’s not the same man. You can dismiss this Heroclitian obsession with flux and the changing nature of things as idle philosophy, but you’d be wrong to do so. Sometimes we forget that circumstances change; we forget the monumentally important fact that because something worked in the past it does not mean that it is best suited for the future. Unfortunately, we don’t necessarily notice this negligence because it doesn’t affect us. It negatively impacts our children, the next generation. I’m talking about a stagnant education system, an education system that is being inundated with new mechanisms for learning and improved methodologies, but is too overwhelmed, confused, and calcified to adapt to new research on effective teaching practices. This collection is designed as a wake up call.
The arts have a beautiful history with change. Paintings have clearly evolved over time to reflect the changing culture and times. From medieval religious works, romanticism, surrealism, impressionism, cubism, and on and on artist have experimented and pushed the borders of what art can look like. As the styles have changed so have people’s perceptions of them. Ange Han looks at the way perceptions about a single painting can change over time in her essay “Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss”: Portraying Role Reversal Within Love”. The object is the same, but the circumstances around it have been altered, so its purpose and effect have changed as well. Similarly, Trace Calloway examines changing drama genres in “Rebirth as a Symbol of Genre Emergence in Shakespeare’s The Winter Tale”. He argues that a single text can be illustrative of the shifting milieu of the times, as it reveals the protean nature of all literature to better instruct and reflect the values of the society that creates it.
Then Lisa Shurtz in “Social Media in the Classroom” and Tequilla Richardson in “The Effectiveness of Guided Notes in an Inclusive Classroom” explore the implications of changing environments and knowledge bases for the educational system. Teachers have a vast array of new tools at their disposal that are currently either entirely ignored or vastly underutilized. Being made aware of the usefulness of social media and guided notes is the first step in incorporating more effective strategies into the classroom and better equipping our students to lead fruitful productive lives, engaged with what they are learning and excited to carry it into the future. Shurtz and Richardson comb through the evidence in an attempt to prove the benefit of their proposed techniques and to sway the mind of the unconvinced. Traditional does not always mean better.
These are only small steps directed at solving a large and systemic issue, but change is inevitable, and we hope to help influence the future of pedagogy to seriously consider the alternatives to traditional educational tools and to experiment with and implement new tools into the daily lives of both students and teachers. Look to the past and see the benefit of change. Look to the future and dream of a better tomorrow.