Middle Tennessee State University: Journals@MTSU
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Learning Doesn’t STEM from Worksheets: Why STEM Learning Starts Beyond Paper and Pencil Tasks
Full text linkThe authors of this article explore the use of worksheets in STEM classrooms. This is viewed through the specific lens of a whole-child, constructivist approach, which suggests that learning is an active process where learners are challenged, and problems are solved through exploration and play. Worksheets create an environment where learners are seeking the answers from the teacher as opposed to creating space where students initiate learning. The authors discuss The National Science Teaching Associations three-dimensional teaching which supports learning through real world applications, engagement that moves from curiosity to interest to reason, and exploration of science, driven by student interest. Furthermore, allowing learners to truly play will help develop a sense of ownership throughout their learning. Finally, the current educational practices that rely heavily on worksheets are doing a disservice to learners and the environment. Moving towards activities that support investigation, experience, and student driven learning will create learners who ask questions and seek answers all around them
USING DISCUSSION TO IMPROVE ECONOMIC KNOWLEDGE
Full text linkThis paper offers a response to a paradox in the literature on economics education. The paradox is that economic knowledge has been found to be sensitive to an individual’s ethical, moral, and political convictions. I hypothesize that the source of this paradox is the divergence between the learning of economics and its application outside the classroom. Often the teaching and assessment of economic knowledge focuses on the technical dimensions of our discipline. This begins with introducing students to theory in principles courses and continues as the subject becomes more mathematically rigorous. Outside the classroom, the more subjective elements of economics matter tremendously. From the minimum wage to climate policy, the application of economic knowledge is steeped in normative considerations. In response to the divergence between the learning and application of economics, the normative and technical sides of economics ought to be taught in tandem. In this paper, ways to use discussion to bridge the gap between these two branches of economic knowledge is presented. The merits and limitations of this technique are considered. For the reader interested in trying this technique, a sample selection of prompts that have been used in principles courses is provided. Ultimately, the goal of teaching is to increase students’ economic knowledge. The argument is made that open-ended discussion, coupled with lecture, is an effective way to achieve this end
Stamps of the Island Games
Full text linkA history and overview of the postage stamps issued as part of the Island Games. 
A Veiled Inclusion: Safie as Mary Wollstonecraft in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Full text linkOver 200 years after its conception, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein not only remains one of the most influential works of all-time, but researchers are still gaining new insights into the culturally and philosophically significant lessons drawn from its pages. Shelley’s masterpiece takes influences from her life and cohesively stitches them together with politics and social commentary, paying homage to those she reveres as she seeks to establish herself as both an author and the torchbearer of her parents’ legacies. Expectations were high for Shelley considering her pedigree as the child of two successful authors known for their progressive ideologies, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Born Mary Godwin, Shelley’s birth was marked by the untimely death of her mother, leaving her alone to navigate a social landscape that simultaneously held great expectations for her while also oppressing her because of her gender. Wollstonecraft’s absence served as a painful yet substantial influence on Shelley, but it was Wollstonecraft’s controversial status that contributed to Shelley’s choice to shroud her mother’s presence in the work. While Frankenstein quotes various Romantic writers and historically significant figures, such as future husband Percy Shelley and childhood influence Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shelley’s activist, progressive mother is neither directly quoted nor openly referenced (Robinson 132). Wollstonecraft’s feminist ideologies and death are embedded in the characters of Frankenstein, and the novel’s focus on the martyred feminine, such as Caroline Beaufort and Justine Moritz, is frequently recognized as a reference to Wollstonecraft. Indeed, the overarching theme of the toxic masculine resulting from the absence of the beneficial feminine can be interpreted as an allusion to Wollstonecraft’s absence in Mary’s life. However, examination of the novel’s feminist core features a lone female voice silenced in the midst of a male-dominated narration, that of the Christian Arab Safie, who flees oppression to be with her love interest, Felix De Lacey. While scholarship has identified Wollstonecraft’s philosophies on education and slavery as depicted through Safie, there is further evidence to suggest that Safie’s character is representative of Wollstonecraft herself. Through Safie, Wollstonecraft’s actual experiences from her abusive upbringing, restricted education, and independent travels across Europe are depicted. Via the medium of letter-writing, Safie, like Wollstonecraft, makes the argument for women as independent, rational beings. Furthermore, the presentation of Safie’s letters is stolen by the Creature, symbolically suppressing Safie’s ideas just as Wollstonecraft’s activism was silenced in a male-dominated society. It is through Safie’s subtle inclusion that Shelley is able to disguise her mother’s presence in order to safely navigate and confront the controversies surrounding her mother’s life and make her a quintessential part of the Frankenstein lore
Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Pre-Industrial Dream
Full text linkIn his 1871 hollow-earth novel, The Coming Race, Edward Bulwer-Lytton created a society in which nobody lives in want, has to toil endlessly to earn a living, or is wealthy enough to incite envy in others. The people are strong, healthy, attractive and long-living. Their widespread prosperity does not require the abolition of private property nor does their good health depend upon Erewhonian eugenics. Neither do they lack outlets for their impressive creative and intellectual energies. For all of this, very few critics in the century-and-a-half since its publication have attempted to take the utopian character of this society literally, opting instead to read it as satirical, dystopian, or anti-utopian. One critic even considers it the father of the anti-utopian novels (Seeber 39). I argue, however, that The Coming Race should be read not as an anti-utopian “Condemnation of Advanced Ideas” but as a counter-industrial utopia evoking pre-industrial-era cultural norms and values in a way that casts those of the Victorian era as inferior (Campbell 125). Bulwer’s novel performs this move primarily by undoing the industrial era’s ascendency of labor over workmanship and contemplation, an ascendency described in detail by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition (1958). Insofar as the novel “reject[s] utopia as a blueprint while preserving it as a dream” and places significant emphasis on the “conflict between the originary world and the utopian society” as well as the imperfections within the utopian society itself, the novel is best understood as a precursor to the “critical utopia” of the twentieth century (Moylan 10)
Suparno Banerjee’s Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybridity.
No full textIn Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybridity (ISF), Suparno Banerjee highlights the hybridity of Indian sf by evaluating its creation at the intersection of Indian and Western cultures and proceeds to develop this theme along with other patterns more elaborately.Banerjee is an associate professor of English and an established scholar on Indian sf with many scholarly publications to his credit, including his dissertation, Other Tomorrows: Postcoloniality, Science Fiction and India (2010), which studies Indian sf from a postcolonial perspective, arguing that it “intervenes in the history-oriented discourse of postcolonial Anglophone Indian literature and refocuses attention on the nation’s future” by negotiating “the stigma of colonialism to a nation emerging as a new world power” (1)
Alcala Antonio Gonzalez and Carl H. Sederholm’s Lovecraft in the 21st Century: Dead, But Still Dreaming
No full textLovecraft in the 21st Century: Dead, But Still Dreaming opens with the premise that Lovecraft is everywhere, inextricably bound up with popular culture. Indeed, the tendrils of Lovecraft\u27s lore and themes spread through nearly every cultural touchstone, as the sheer breadth of subject matter covered in this work makes plain. This anthology conveys the scope of Lovecraft\u27s influence and reach. He inspires Magic: The Gathering decks (Albary and Albary 103) and influences the depiction of Nightmare and Dream in Bloodborne (2015) (Murray 227); he becomes a fixation for Alan Moore (Lindsay 71) and influences Brazilian horror parody (Reis Filho and Schvarzman 50). He shows up in The X-Files (1993-2002) and he inflects Stranger Things (2016-present). If prevalence is relevance, and if relevance is importance, then the importance of a critical anthology on Lovecraft\u27s enduring legacy is clear. And in an era where you can buy Cthulhu plush toys (Hudson 186) or consume a graphic novel which censors his cat\u27s offensive name (Shapira 92), a critical treatment of his prejudices, politics, and philosophy is urgent needed too
Hosam A. Ibraham Elzembely and Emad El-Din Aysha’s Arab and Muslim Science Fiction: Critical Essays
No full textIn the preface to Arab and Muslim Science Fiction: Critical Essays, edited by Hosam A. Ibrahim Elzembely and Emad El-Din Aysha, the former writes, “This is a book dedicated to filling in the gap once and for all in the production and dissemination of knowledge about Arabic and Muslim science fiction” (1). What is most important is the perspective from which the volume operates. As Ibrahim Elzembely observes, much of the scholarship on Arabic and Muslim sf, prior to the publication of this book, has been done “from the singular perspective of a foreign expert” (1)—that is to say, the work already done in this space has mostly been done by those “not intimately acquainted with [Arab] cultural perspective and values or the exact nature of the problems they all face” (1). As such, this volume operates as a corrective to what the editors see as glaring omission in the study of global literature; as Lyn Qualey observes a few pages later in the introduction, “Most of the critical and academic attention given to science fiction has been to the literature produced in North America and Europe” (4). Against the claim that there is “there is no such thing as Arabic science fiction at all” (4), the editors and writers included in Arab and Muslim Science Fiction add to the conversation “the rich landscape of science fiction in other languages” by exploring not just that fiction itself but also “the ways in which it fuses with other literary and cultural traditions” (4)
“Seldom Like Yesterday”: Situating the Novel and Film Adaptation of The Princess and the Goblin
Full text linkWhile much Victorian literature has been adapted into films that carry anappeal for a modern audience, the 1994 adaptation of George MacDonald’s1872 novel The Princess and the Goblin cannot claim the same populartriumph as other successful Victorian children’s adaptations over the pastcentury such as Alice in Wonderland, Black Beauty, or Treasure Island. Thoughinterest in MacDonald’s work fell off dramatically after his death in 1905 andhis writing has received criticism for being long-winded and didactic (thoughhe is certainly not the only Victorian to share those characteristics), many ofhis stories contain delightful elements found regularly in popular children’sstories: princesses, goblins, absent fathers, magic, heroism, family, and atransferrable moral or lesson. Here, I look at József Gémes’s film alongsideMacDonald’s original novel and use comparative methodology to explain whyit did not live up to its potential. I argue that MacDonald’s imaginative worldretains potential for success in a new, well-funded and well-produced filmadaptation, given the necessary time, money, and motivation
Destination Adventure: Virtual Field Trips that Won’t Disappoint!
Full text linkWho doesn’t love going on an adventure, seeing new sights, observing rare occurrences, talking to people from far away, and experiencing new things? Imagine the thrill students can have with doing things not before possible, all while deeply engaged and mastering academic standards. What about taking a trip to the Louvre in France, learning about corals in the Caribbean Sea, investigating ecosystems in Colorado, or learning about engineering by visiting an Amazon fulfillment center? Even if these may seem out of reach, each of these are possible via a virtual field trip. A virtual field trip (VFT) can be a great way to provide unique, one-of-a-kind experiences that will captivate students and provide meaningful, standards-aligned learning activities