Language Teacher Identities in the Southern United States: Transforming Rural Schools

Foreign language (FL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching present considerable challenges in the rural U.S. South. Local language ideologies, budgetary considerations, and challenges in other curricular areas (e.g., math and science) lead to marginalizing both FL and ESL in schools. This article examines the personal and professional trajectories of in-service language teachers in K–12 settings in the state of Mississippi to better understand how participants conceptualize their practice and their roles in schools. By analyzing the interview discourse of nine teachers, we found that both ESL and FL teachers positioned themselves against dominant ideologies and educational policies and constructed themselves as agents of change in the classroom, school, and community at large. This study contributes to the argument for integrating FL and ESL in rural areas, where both groups need support, and provides suggestions for ESL-FL teacher collaboration in rural schools.     

What helps and hinders indigenous student success in higher education health programmes: a qualitative study using the Critical Incident Technique

Tertiary institutions aim to provide high quality teaching and learning that meet the academic needs for an increasingly diverse student body including indigenous students. Tātou Tātou is a qualitative research project utilising Kaupapa Ma¯ori research methodology and the Critical Incident Technique interview method to investigate the teaching and learning practices that help or hinder Ma¯ori student success in non-lecture settings within undergraduate health programmes at the University of Auckland. Forty-one interviews were completed from medicine, health sciences, nursing and pharmacy. A total of 1346 critical incidents were identified with 67% helping and 33% hindering Ma¯ori student success. Thirteen sub-themes were grouped into three overarching themes representing potential areas of focus for tertiary institutional undergraduate health programme development: Māori student support services, undergraduate programme, and Ma¯ori student whanaungatanga. Academic success for indigenous students requires multi-faceted, inclusive, culturally responsive and engaging teaching and learning approaches delivered by educators and student support staff.     

A day in the life (and death) of a public university

This is a narrative of an actual day in the author's working life at a large public university in the southern hemisphere. It is an enquiry into life, and death, at the university. It attempts to balance a critical and informed perspective with a lived perspective and, as a story that contributes to a developing genre of academic writing, it works to counter the dominant neo-liberal discourse in the university by reaffirming the value of the imagination. It reflects on a remarkable–unremarkable day to show the complexity of being an individual subject, situated in language, hailed by different discourses, feeling and sometimes thinking contradictory things at once, in a contemporary university context.     

Concurrent validation of the Actigraph gt3x+, Polar Active accelerometer,Omron HJ-720 and Yamax Digiwalker SW-701 pedometer step counts in lab-based and free-living settings

Activity monitors are frequently used to assess activity in many settings. But as technology advances, so do the mechanisms used to estimate activity causing a continuous need to validate newly developed monitors. The purpose of this study was to examine the step count validity of the Yamax Digiwalker SW-701 pedometer (YX), Omron HJ-720 T pedometer (OP), Polar Active accelerometer (PAC) and Actigraph gt3x+ accelerometer (AG) under controlled and free-living conditions. Participants completed five stages of treadmill walking (n = 43) and a subset of these completed a 3-day free-living wear period (n = 37). Manually counted (MC) steps provided a criterion measure for treadmill walking, whereas the comparative measure during free-living was the YX. During treadmill walking, the OP was the most accurate monitor across all speeds (±1.1% of MC steps), while the PAC underestimated steps by 6.7–16.0% per stage. During free-living, the OP and AG counted 97.5% and 98.5% of YX steps, respectively. The PAC overestimated steps by 44.0%, or 5,265 steps per day. The Omron pedometer seems to provide the most reliable and valid estimate of steps taken, as it was the best performer under lab-based conditions and provided comparable results to the YX in free-living. Future studies should consider these monitors in additional populations and settings.     

Does interpretation influence elaboration and environmental behaviors?

Understanding the development of pro-environmental behavioral intentions and behaviors remains one of the greatest challenges for environmental educators worldwide. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model as a theoretical foundation, we developed surveys to evaluate the influence of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Junior Ranger program on youths’ (ages 8–13) elaboration (comprised of awareness, interest, and cognitive engagement) and stewardship behaviors. Results suggest that these programs had significant immediate influences on both elaboration as well as stewardship intentions and behaviors. We then investigated whether elaboration was predictive of children’s behavioral intentions and self-reported behaviors associated with stewardship using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results suggest that elaboration accounted for 88% of the variance in participants’ stewardship behaviors/intentions.     

Analysing student written solutions to investigate if problem-solving processes are evident throughout

An interdisciplinary science course has been implemented at a university with the intention of providing students the opportunity to develop a range of key skills in relation to: real-world connections of science, problem-solving, information and communications technology use and team while linking subject knowledge in each of the science disciplines. One of the problems used in this interdisciplinary course has been selected to evaluate if it affords students the opportunity to explicitly display problem-solving processes. While the benefits of implementing problem-based learning have been well reported, far less research has been devoted to methods of assessing student problem-solving solutions. A problem-solving theoretical framework was used as a tool to assess student written solutions to indicate if problem-solving processes were present. In two academic years, student problem-solving processes were satisfactory for exploring and understanding, representing and formulating, and planning and executing, indicating that student collaboration on problems is a good initiator of developing these processes. In both academic years, students displayed poor monitoring and reflecting (MR) processes at the intermediate level. A key impact of evaluating student work in this way is that it facilitated meaningful feedback about the students’ problem-solving process rather than solely assessing the correctness of problem solutions.     

Preschoolers’ academic readiness: What role does the teacher–child relationship play?

We examined the role of the teacher–child relationship quality (close, dependent, and conflictive) on preschoolers’ (N = 95) academic readiness for kindergarten, and we tested children's prosocial and aggressive behavior and peer group exclusion as mediators of this relation. A unique feature of this study is the ethnically and socio-economically diverse preschool-aged sample. The association between close teacher–child relationships and academic readiness was partially mediated by prosocial behavior and peer group exclusion. There was also evidence of a transactional association between close teacher–child relationships and children's behavior. Additionally, children's behavior and peer group exclusion mediated the relation between negative teacher–child relationships (dependent and conflictive) and academic readiness. The findings suggest that teacher training, education, and support for establishing close teacher–child relationships may maximize preschoolers’ academic readiness by promoting social adaptation.