SYMPHONY JOURNALS
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Geometric patterns in Albanian carpets: An ethnomathematical approach to cultural heritage and mathematics education
Get PDFThis study examines the geometric patterns woven into traditional Albanian carpets from an ethnomathematics perspective, with the aim of uncovering the interplay between mathematics and cultural heritage. The use of symmetrical shapes, rhythmic repetitions, and geometric compositions in carpet motifs attests to an innate mathematical knowledge, developed and transmitted from generation to generation through oral tradition and artisanal practice. The analysis relies on visual documentation and measurement of decorative elements from different regional samples, highlighting features such as axial and rotational symmetry, proportional ratios, and simple fractal structures. The results show that Albanian artisans have intuitively applied advanced mathematical principles, which serve not only for aesthetic purposes but also to preserve cultural identity and stylistic coherence. By documenting these geometric structures, this research contributes to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in the face of globalization and industrialization. Furthermore, the findings provide a foundation for integrating artistic heritage into mathematics education, fostering meaningful connections between culture and science while enabling future generations to appreciate and preserve this rich tradition. This study enriches the ethnomathematics literature and demonstrates how cultural artifacts can serve as bridges between past knowledge and contemporary educational practice, ensuring the continuity of heritage for the future
AI in education, ChatGPT, and personalized learning: Measuring public attention in Pakistan through Google Trends
Get PDFThis study examines public interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education, specifically analyzing the terms ‘AI in education,’ ‘ChatGPT in education,’ and ‘Personalized Learning’ in the Pakistani context from December 2019 to July 2025, utilizing data from Google Trends. Employing an infodemiological approach, the study tracks fluctuations in search volume to gauge societal attention to AI-driven educational technologies. The findings reveal a substantial increase in interest in AI and ChatGPT in education, starting in late 2023, with peak interest occurring in early 2025. In contrast, Personalized Learning exhibited a more modest growth pattern, marked by sporadic spikes in search interest. The regional analysis of search interest identified Islamabad and Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK) as the regions with the highest engagement with AI-related educational terms. Notably, Balochistan demonstrated the highest interest in AI in education, followed by Islamabad and AJK, while Sindh exhibited comparatively lower levels of engagement. It is essential to highlight that high search interest does not necessarily correlate with increased adoption or infrastructural capacity. The elevated RSV in Balochistan for AI in education may reflect heightened curiosity, media visibility, or policy discourse, rather than widespread implementation in educational settings. The results underscore the growing recognition of AI’s potential to revolutionize the education sector. However, challenges such as limited infrastructure and digital literacy remain significant barriers to broader adoption. The study advocates for the development of targeted policies, AI literacy programs, and region-specific initiatives to ensure equitable access to AI-enhanced educational solutions
Student perceptions of their music education in Cyprus Music Schools: Future directions
Get PDFThis study explores students’ perceptions, attitudes, and suggestions regarding music education in Cyprus Music Schools, highlighting the cultural context of their learning and the future directions they envision. As student voice becomes increasingly crucial in shaping curricula, understanding how students experience their musical studies is essential for designing relevant and meaningful educational practices. Qualitative data were collected through open-ended questionnaires from 128 upper-secondary students across the five Cyprus Music Schools. Thematic analysis showed that students highly value performance-based and collaborative subjects, such as individual lessons, ensembles, and concerts, which they see as central to their musical and personal growth. Experiences connected to Cyprus’s musical heritage, including Byzantine and traditional music, received mixed responses, suggesting a need to better integrate cultural content with students’ current interests. Students also expressed clear ideas for shaping the future of music education, including broader instrumental and genre options, more creative subjects, and greater inclusion of contemporary musical practices. These suggestions reflect a desire for a curriculum that both respects Cyprus’s cultural identity and supports students’ evolving musical aspirations. The findings offer guidance for culturally responsive and future-oriented curriculum development in Cyprus Music Schools, underscoring the importance of incorporating student perspectives into educational decision-making
Authoritarianism and education
Get PDFThis journal has thus far avoided focusing on the discussion of the effects of politics in education. Politics is a given in education. It tends to reflect the ideology of a dominant party about how and what students learn. The effects of the space race in the 1960s on curricula in Western nations exemplify. Politics today is different, much more existential and angrier, and it portends significant epistemological changes in education and in society itself.
Politics and education have always walked together, but the relationship has risen to new intensities. Educators have struggled for several years now to adapt to increasingly authoritarian pressures from political forces. Social scientists need to respond to these heightened realities and focus more intensely but impartially on how political dynamics affect the future of education.
I specifically address movements that are shifting Western society, in particular from liberal democracies to totalitarian governments. The movement is arguably most evident in the United States but is also strong in European nations (e.g., the Red Ladies in England or neo-Nazi-ism in other European countries). Liberal democracy is characterized by the rule of law rather than the preferences of people in power, by checks and balances that ensure such rule, and universal suffrage. Such societies are liberal because they emphasize the rights of individuals and the primacy of human welfare. Authoritarian governments emphasize the opposite, the subjugation of the rule of law and human welfare to preferences for power and control
Re-listening to Alexisonfire: Duo-currere, adolescence, and the forms of study therewithin
Get PDFThis article shares insights emergent from our practices of listening and re-listening to music that deeply affected us during adolescence. Drawing methodologically on duo-currere, we focus our reflections on our mutual love for, and respective experiences with, the Canadian post-hardcore band Alexisonfire. We evoke the concept of study toward an articulation of the value of such listening both in adolescence and today. More specifically, the following insights emerge from our reflexive practice: 1) our adolescent listening shaped our affective landscapes, forming the contours of our relational and social lives; 2) our adolescent listenings were our first forms of study, and we find similarity in the ways we operate as scholars of curriculum today; and 3) re-visiting those listenings with active attention constitutes a valued form of study, albeit perhaps one that does not fit within the constraining value logics of neoliberal capitalist society. We conclude the article by gesturing toward the affective potency of music heard in our adolescence and its relevance in currere
Mirror and instrument: Higher education as reluctant partner of the nation-state
Get PDFHigher education plays a double role vis-à-vis the nation. It is a mirror of a nation’s politics, reflecting the needs and aspirations of a populace and a government. Simultaneously, it is an instrument of those very politics, operating not just as a set of institutions where teaching and learning happen, but a locus of national identity, legitimation, economic and scientific action, and societal progress.
The seven articles in this issue are shining reminders of these dynamics and, most importantly, evidence that the mirror/instrument dual identity extends across vastly different contexts of time, geography, and nationhood. At the same time, the articles make clear that the process of developing that identity is hardly natural or automatic. It is instead the fruit of contestation, extending my own remarks on the higher education system in the United States: “It is the product of contests and compromises, attacks and counterattacks, ideas and exigencies” (Ris, 2022)
Living our subjective presence: An interview with William F. Pinar
Get PDFThis paper is a narrative account of the conversation that took place at Pinar’s house, on April 4, 2023, focusing on a few themes that emerge from his 2023 book A Praxis of Presence in Curriculum Theory: Advancing Currere Against Cultural Crises in Education as well as the dialogue between us, including “subjective presence,” “study,” and “knowledge of most worth”. This paper hopes to experience Pinar’s calling not only in reverberating textual conversations but also in the author’s embodied lived experiences in the interview. This paper invokes several lived moments the author shared with Pinar and gives a glimpse of the person behind his text, in other words, to humanize the text. This would echo the humanist emphasis embedded in the reconceptualization of curriculum studies. This interwoven feeling, reading, thinking, and writing, I believe, are in itself a very pedagogical attempt to “concretize” the abstract and go beyond and behind the text. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of embracing the subjective presence for teachers’ pedagogical praxis
The heart of the matter: Jean-Luc Nancy
Get PDFCurriculum theorists write about things that no one wants to talk about. Currere is not just about lived experience, but it is also about death. And it is this that no one wants to talk about. This is what Heidegger called Being-Toward-Death. I write about a professor who died several days before his seminar began. That professor was Jean-Luc Nancy who was Jacques Derrida’s student. Derrida is a familiar name to curriculum theorists, but Jean Luc-Nancy might not be. Christopher Fynsk—a well-known philosopher and friend of Nancy’s—had the courage to teach Nancy’s seminar only a few days after Nancy died. I took that seminar. The year was 2021. The seminar was held at the European Graduate School. In that seminar I began studying Nancy’s work. This paper is an introduction to Nancy’s work
Impacts of K-12 emergency online teaching within a rural, rural-remote context: Finding value in the experience
Get PDFExploratory, convergent mixed methods research was used to examine the shifts in rural/rural-remote K-12 teachers\u27 (n=40) perspectives and experiences of emergency online teaching (EOT), including perceptions of value before and after the EOT phase of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The sample came from one highly rural state (64.9% rural population) in the western United States. Data were collected using a Likert-like survey along with a set of open-ended questions. Descriptive statistics and a t-test were used to examine survey data while thematic analysis of the participants’ narratives was used to identify themes within the open-ended data. A substantial increase in knowledge was reported post-EOT, and statistical analysis confirmed significant gains in perceived knowledge of and confidence with online instruction (t (39) = 8.2041, p ≤ 0.001) within the sample. Findings suggest that participants’ self-efficacy with online teaching improved because of their EOT experiences. Results also suggest the experience had value beyond the pandemic years, with participants reporting perceptions of slight to moderate value, including ongoing value for enhancing teaching and value for learning along with perceptions of self-efficacy and adaptability in times of future crisis. Within the qualitative data, both prominent challenges, such as student engagement, and successes, such as teacher adaptability and resilience, emerged. Recommendations along with consideration of the implications for teacher educators, rural policy makers, and other stakeholders interested in determining the long-term benefits and challenges of the emergency online teaching experience on teachers and their professional practice are examined as well
ARTiculating currere: Arts-based methods and methodology to facilitate and understand biographic situations
Get PDFThis article explores how an instructor of undergraduate writing courses within a public university used arts-based writing assignments to facilitate the currere process. Throughout the semester, students were asked to complete artistic representations of writing prompts to pair with their assignments. Students completed narrative, analytic, and research-based writing assignments with artistic components. The art-making invited students to include biographical elements of their identities into their compositions, which enabled them to engage with the currere process. Additionally, the instructor’s own knowledge of currere made it possible for her to understand her students’ depth of educational experiences within her curriculum. Through practitioner action research that closely followed voluntary student participants over a semester, this article explores connections between art-making and currere as well as ways the process of currere can function as a curricular method within the undergraduate writing classroom