Competencies for Systems-Level Consultants Within Diverse Schools

The authors in this special issue on systems-level consultation provide an excellent range of models for how school psychologists can work as system-level consultants within the various communities they serve. This article (a) provides commentary on the four articles in this special issue focused on systems-level consultation to serve diverse populations in schools, (b) outlines 10 competencies for systems consultants in diverse schools, and (c) suggests directions for future research, theory, and practice in this area. By intersecting the 2010 National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Practice Model, Blueprint III, and the illustrations in these four articles, 10 competencies for systems-level consultants are articulated. These involve collaborative, recursive, interpersonal processes whereby the systems-level consultant facilitates communication and understanding across different stakeholders, assisting in the joint gathering and interpretation of data. In systems-level consultation, the system is the client and consultants work to build capacity within the system and its stakeholders to address problems and needs.     

Lessons Learned From a Consultation Process Overseas

In this commentary I discuss three international school consultation experiences, highlighting aspects that serve as lessons for professional development and the implementation of effective and helpful strategies that meet the needs of children and youth in school systems. Relationships developed and maintained between the consulting teams and the consultees were oriented toward three intervention goals: psychoeducational services, well-being in adolescents, and instructional procedures. In general, the projects described in the three articles were successful and support the utility of international systems-level consultation as a means of helping improve the quality of outcomes in the school contexts in which they worked. I end my commentary by providing some general observations and questions to be considered when engaging in international school consultation.     

Reviews

Reviews in this articles: Resolving University Contradictions The Changing University?, Tom Schuller (Editor) Staff Development for What? Directions in staff development, Angela Brew (Ed.) Are Adults Moving Centre Stage? Adults in Higher Education—International Perspectives in Access and Participation, Pat Davies (editor)     

Education for Sustainability in the Parks: A Project Inspired by Chet Bowers

Since its inception, the education for sustainable development (ESD) movement in higher education has been doomed. Its standards of sustainability, bound to measures of development which suggest human flourishing is equated with the western ideals, is precisely the double-bind Chet Bowers so passionately stood against. His critical perspective on education itself and the ecopedagogy shared in Educating for Eco-Justice and Community (2001) as well as the critical analysis he demonstrates in How Language Limits our Understanding of Environmental Education (2001) are exactly what is needed to reorient a movement which in most cases is now focused on efficiency. I will share the story of my own discovery of Chet Bowers’ work and its subsequent manifestation in my work both within the greater community and within the context of higher education therein. With this as a backdrop, I critique the ESD movement as fundamentally flawed due to its double-binds and metaphorical missteps, and I reconceptualize sustainability as a guiding vision rather than a target. I call for a shift from ESD to Victor Nolet’s (2010) Education for Sustainability (EfS) and recontextualize the movement within the framework of community. Finally, I share a piloted normative approach founded on Bowers’ eco-justice principles.     

Reflecting on the Role of Competence and Culture in Consultation at the International Level

International educational consultation is challenging work that requires not only attention to best practices in consultation but also additional focus on cultural norms and regularities. In the three articles of this special issue, the consultation competencies of consultants play a critical role, as exemplified by entry issues, problem-solving practices, and relationship development. In addition, the overriding issue of culture and how it impacts consultation requires special attention for the international consultant as consultants attempt to use their expertise in new contexts.     

To Alleviate Suffering: A Professor Reflects on the Moral Stakes of His Teaching

This article is a meditation on a professor's effort to fuse the personal and political in his teaching and, especially, to reframe the stakes away from the technical and toward the moral. As a teacher and educator, I consider two questions about my teaching that emerged from the mandate to reflect on teaching effectiveness during my promotion and tenure review process: Are my students more powerful in the world because of my teaching, and does my teaching alleviate suffering? I theorize what each question means for how I approach my classes to uncover larger questions about what it means to teach. In particular, I argue that any consideration of teaching reduced to a set of skills fails to attend to the sociocultural reality of students' lives, and thus reproduces suffering.     

Rhizocurrere: a Deleuzo-Guattarian approach to curriculum autobiography

This paper introduces rhizocurrere, a curriculum autobiographical concept I created to chart my efforts to develop place-responsive outdoor environmental education. Rhizocurrere brings together rhizome, a Deleuze and Guattari concept, with currere, Pinar’s autobiographical method for curriculum inquiry. Responding to invitations from Deleuze, Guattari and Pinar, to experiment, I have adapted their ideas to create a philosophical~methodological concept that draws attention to relationships between my pedagogical and curriculum research and the contexts that have shaped my life~work. This paper outlines rhizocurrere, its parent concepts and how I have enacted my attempts to think differently about curricula and pedagogy. The central question is not ‘what is rhizocurrere?’ but rather ‘how does/could rhizocurrere work?’ and ‘what does/might rhizocurrere allow me to do?’     

CLASSROOM CLIMATE IN AN ORTHODOX DAY SCHOOL: The Contribution of Emotional Intelligence,Demographics, and Classroom Context

I had completed a long list of wonderful ideas for the Synagogue School of the 21st Century, and was about to sit down and write my paper, when my eye glanced upon the Spring-Summer 1990 issue of Jewish Education. When I noticed the articles of Alvin Schiff and Rela Geffen Monson, I read through them before beginning to write: Lo and behold, everything I had written down and was already there — in Jewish Education under the title, “Toward the Year 2000.”     

Entry points when undergraduate research mentors reflect on their role: a qualitative case study

Abstract

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are increasingly taking on mentoring roles in undergraduate research (UR). There is, however, a paucity of research focusing on how they conceptualize their mentoring role. In this qualitative interview study, we identified three entry points that mentors reflect on to define their role: (1) What are the goals of UR? (2) What do the students expect from me? and (3) How should I use my expert knowledge? We discuss how academic developers can use these entry points together with a set of reflective lenses to stimulate critical reflection on the mentoring role and help the mentors to define their role and help the mentors to define their role.     

Now,what? Standing in one’s generation,taking consultation

ABSTRACT

I situate myself in the context of an evolving conversation in relation to what it means to be a woman. In my mother’s generation, the first wave of feminism forced a collision between traditional western female values grounded in a subversive authority and the desire to emerge from that type of repressive position. From the standpoint of my daughter’s generation, I may be tilting at windmills, trying to find my own authority in relation to a paternal authority that I feel deauthorises and devalues the voice I am trying to find. I take that consultation seriously, inviting me to think about relationships between what can and cannot be seen from any particular vertex. Given that maturation requires our ability to come to terms with difference and with limit, how can women more effectively enact and pass along the process of becoming oneself as a fundamental value?     

Professional experience: learning from the past to build the future

The title of the 2014 Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA) conference was Teacher Education, An Audit: Building a platform for future engagement. One of the conference themes was Professional Experience: What works? Why? I seized upon this theme and the title of the conference as it afforded me an opportunity to do an audit of my research in professional experience over the last 25 years. This article presents this evidence base and the messages I have taken from this evidence. I have done this in the hope that, by collating some of the insights gained from the past and the present, it will help to “build a platform for future engagement” in professional experience. In preparing this article I was asked by the Editors to reflect also on how I developed my distinctive line of inquiry and expertise in relation to the practicum across an extended period. These reflections are included. I hope they will support university-based teacher educators in enhancing their satisfaction and achievements from working in this stimulating and provocative field of study.     

“A Dream Not Quite Come True:” Reassessing the Benderly Era in Jewish Education 1

As I look back on my professional career of some fifty years and try to summarize the guiding principles in my work, I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the protagonists and advocates of the community concept and responsibility for Jewish education, the men who were my mentors, teachers and senior colleagues. Foremost among them was Samson Benderly, under whose influence and guidance I came when I was seventeen and continued to be under his influence during my association with the New York Bureau of Jewish Education for fourteen years. The other men were those who were associated with Dr. Benderly: Isaac B. Berkson, Israel Chipkin, Alexander Dushkin, Emanuel Gamoran, Leo Honor and Albert Schoolman. During my professional work, I had the opportunity to meet and work with this distinguished group of Jewish educators, and their influence on me, personally and via their writings, was çompelling.     

三性与修辞学——重读李晋荃《“准确性、鲜明性、生动性”是修辞的要求吗？——兼谈修辞学的研究对象》

毛泽东在《工作方法六十条（草案）》（1958年1月）中提出＂三性＂（准确性、鲜明性、生动性）之后,很快成为修辞学的纲领。李晋荃的《＂准确性、鲜明性、生动性＂是修辞的要求吗？——兼谈修辞学的研究对象》（1980年）是一篇拨乱反正的论文。三十年之后,李文中的观点需要重新认识,这其实是对修辞学的性质与对象的再思考。     

PhD by Publication: innovative approach to social science research,or operationalisation of the doctoral student … or both?

ABSTRACT

The PhD by Publication offers doctoral students an opportunity to focus on publishing during their candidature. A considerable body of literature has explored questions of legitimacy, consistency and quality of this model of scholarship, while students have reflected on how this approach helped build a publishing track record and develop skills associated with writing scholarly articles [Jackson, D. (2013). Completing a PhD by publication: A review of Australian policy and implications for practice. Higher Education Research & Development, 32(3), 355–368; Robins, L., & Kanowski, P. (2008). PhD by publication: A student’s perspective. Journal of Research Practice, 4(2), 1–20]. However, there is a need to explore how this approach both shapes and reflects the student experience of doctoral studies. This auto-ethnographical article analyses my own experience of the PhD by Publication. On the one hand, this method suited my multidisciplinary research topic and approach to research and assisted the flexibility and creativity of my research. On the other, I began to view my value as a researcher and the value of my research, in terms of the quantitative performance metrics of research in output, citation counts and h-index. Concept of performativity, I analyse how the PhD by Publication potentially reshapes what it is to be a doctoral student, and how the value of doctoral students is construed by themselves and others within their university.     

A response to David Light

As David Light makes some of my writing on English teaching central to his article Culture and Civilization (Spring 1983 issue) may I briefly respond to his critique?     

What teachers need to know about the struggle for self-determination (conscientization) and self-regulation: adults with disabilities speak about their education experiences

The purpose of this paper is to help teachers better understand the struggles that people with disabilities experience in attaining their educational goals and to encourage the development of teaching and learning strategies that help to respect and facilitate the struggle itself. The authors share the generative themes that emerged using a critical pedagogy approach (dialogic interviews) to elicit the voices of adults with disabilities speaking about their public school experiences. In discussing the implications for teachers, the authors show the intersections of educational psychology's concept self-regulation and critical pedagogy's concept conscientization and special education’ s concept self-determination. Why the ‘struggle’ itself is important (from the perspectives provided by conscientization, self-regulation, and self determination) is discussed.The major question is whether or not teachers can structure the awareness process that results in learners becoming aware enough to verbalize, “I have difficulties”. What do teachers do to stimulate the metacognitive thinking processes that makes it possible for students with disabilities to think, “I can monitor myself!”? How can teachers capture the power of the conscientization experience that leads students with disabilities to experience the generative will power “to use the powers that I have to make a difference in my life's situation?” How do adults with disabilities come to these kinds of awareness and how can teachers help facilitate the awareness?     

Exploring The Island: Mapping the Shifting Sands in the Landscape of English Classroom Culture and Pedagogy

I begin with an account of my own observation of an English lesson taught by one of my student teachers using a teaching resource, The Island, that I used myself as a new teacher more than 20 years ago and of my own responses on finding it transformed by two decades of change in educational policy and practice. It has become almost a given in academic articles on English teaching, to refer, in a sentence or two, to the reduction of the English curriculum, the narrowing of pedagogy and the loss of teacher agency due to the dominance of a high stakes assessment regime. The policy changes that have given rise to this change have been clearly analysed elsewhere, but part of my purpose here is just to look again at how it might be experienced by a particular pupil in a particular class. I am interested in analysing some of the features of The Island’s incarnation then and now, from three different angles: as it is inscribed in the project book, as I remember teaching it and as I observed it recently in a London classroom. I draw on theories of literacy and of the teaching of writing in particular in trying to account for some of the differences but beyond that, I argue that it is essential to link such theories to wider political debates about culture and to reflect back from this to the purposes of the English curriculum and culture of the English classroom.     

Creating Our Future in an Age of Transformation

There is a growing realization that many of our social systems and organizations are out-of-syne with the new realities of the recently emerged post-industrial, information/knowledge age. These new realities are touching the lives of every individual, every family and community, the host of organizations of our public and private sectors. and our overall society. They affect the future of humanity as a whole. Questions arise. What are these new realities? What are the meanings of societal transformations? What is our role in facing the massive changes that confront us today? Are we only spectators of these changes? Are we their victims? Are we at the mercy of others who control these changes and the experts who design systems for us? Or is it up to us to shape; our future and create and recreate the systems to which we belong? What kind of capacities and capabilities should we develop that will allow us to design our own lives, shape our systems, and give direction to the evolution of our communities. our organizations, and our society? I have struggled and worked with these questions over the last three decades. They have been the focus of my research and teaching. I explore these questions in this paper in order to define an approach–the systems design approach–by which we can individually and collectively create a better future for ourselves, our families, our communities and our society while enhancing human performance, adding value to our organizations, and most importantly, creating just and ethical systems for future generations.     

Untangling the Grip of White Privilege in Education through Consultation and Systems Change: Introduction to the Special Issue

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the articles in the special issue, School consultation grounded in social justice: Dismantling white privilege in education. The authors first highlight salient aspects of each of the five articles. The article ends with a call to action for educators to use consultation to effect systems change that will interrupt white privilege and racist practices in education.     

Becoming artist,becoming educated,becoming undone: toward a nomadic perspective of college student identity development

In this article, I place my ethnographic project among undergraduate university art students and their professor in dialog with Rosi Braidotti’s figuration of the nomadic subject and her reflections on the importance of creating theoretical alternatives for mapping the embedded and embodied social positions that we inhabit. As educational interlocutors, college students must negotiate expectations and categorizations about age-appropriate relations, career paths, and identity passageways, which are always already framed by Western psychological development discourses. Interested in loosening the grip of these closure-seeking and normalizing discursive practices, I argue for a revision of identity development grounded in a nomadic theory of the subject and engage my data through an alternative analytic of arts-informed assemblage in light of Braidotti’s ideas. In so doing, I uphold my feminist commitment to do theory as both critique and creativity, bringing into view poetic-enough writing and imagery as a response to the question how is it to be in the process of becoming?