What’s Love Got to Do With It? Toward a Theory of Benevolent Whiteness in Education

The Urban Review - In this theoretical essay, I argue that the contemporary over-disciplining of Black and Native youth can best be understood through understanding the culturally violent roots of...     

Teachers’ professional development: a solitary or collegial (ad)venture?

There exists nowadays consensus on the importance of teachers’ professional development. Also, most authors agree that the school's workplace conditions can exert great influence on this development. In this paper the impact of two workplace conditions, autonomy and collegiality, on elementary school teachers’ professional development is analysed. The qualitative research reported makes clear that this influence should be thought of in a balanced way. Certain forms of autonomy and collegiality — and more specifically certain combinations of both workplace conditions — have a far more positive influence on teachers’ professional development than others.     

Philosophers Without Borders? Toward a Comparative Philosophy of Education

One important element of globalization is the dissemination of western educational ideals and organizational frameworks through educational development projects. While postcolonial theory has long offered a useful critique of this expansion, it is less clear about how educational development that eschews neo-imperialist tendencies might proceed. This problem poses a question that requires philosophical reflection. However, much of comparative and international development education ignores philosophical modes of inquiry. Moreover, as Libbrecht (2007) Libbrecht, Ulrich. 2007. Within the Four Seas: Introduction to Comparative Philosophy, Leuven, Belgium: Peeters.  [Google Scholar] argues, philosophy all too often sees itself as synonymous with the Euro-American intellectual tradition, thus ignoring indigenous educational thought that might more appropriately guide local educational development. Drawing on John Dewey's (1938) call for deeper and more inclusive plans of operations in response to social conflicts and Jurgen Habermas (2008) call for “reciprocal learning processes” and “cooperative acts of translation,” we will attempt to reach beyond our individual philosophical borders to explore the necessity and possibilities of comparative philosophy of education by sharing three examples of our current efforts to apply philosophical analysis to international educational development. These examples will articulate and embody the necessity and the challenges of applying philosophical analysis to educational development work.     

Criminal Justice Professionals’ Knowledge of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and Compliance with IRB Protocol

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) perform an essential function in the protection of human participants. A survey was conducted on Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences members to determine their perceptions of IRBs as well as their knowledge of IRB principles and the extent to which they follow IRB protocol. Size of the researcher’s institution, number of research articles, number of years in active research, and number of external grants were also studied in relation to knowledge of IRB guidelines and number of IRB protocol infractions. Findings include significant correlations between involvement in research and engaging in research activities that are against IRB rules.     

My Attitudes Toward Science (MATS): the development of a multidimensional instrument measuring students’ science attitudes

The number of students in the United States choosing science, technology, engineering or mathematics careers is declining at a time when demand for these occupations is rapidly increasing. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to reverse this trend, yet results are uncertain. One’s attitude is key to many choices one makes, and this includes, for many, what career is pursued. Hence, teachers, informal science educators and researchers often wish to measure children’s attitudes towards science using a pretest and a posttest to determine the effects of a curriculum, an activity or an intervention. However, measuring children’s attitudes toward science has been problematic because of both the limited use of basic psychometrics in checking reliability and validity of instruments and the lack of a single construct of students’ attitudes towards science being surveyed. This article reports the development and testing of an instrument for measuring students’ science attitudes across several dimensions. Thirty-two scientists and teachers from the northeastern and south central United States participated in content validity trials. The instrument was field tested with 549 children (92 elementary-school students, 327 middle-school students and 130 high-school students) from 6 rural and suburban school systems located in the northeastern United States to determine inter-item reliability for each dimension. The resulting instrument, entitled My Attitudes Toward Science (MATS), has 40 items that measure four dimensions: (1) Attitude towards the subject of science; (2) Desire to become a scientist; (3) Value of science to society; and (4) Perception of scientists. The MATS, as a multidimensional instrument, can measure several facets of students’ attitude toward science and is designed to be used across grades levels and to be scored easily.     

Different Ways of Reading,or Just Making the Right Noises?

What does reading look like? Can learning to read be reduced to the acquisition of a set of isolable skills, or proficiency in reading be equated with the independence of the solitary, silent reader of prose fiction? These conceptions of reading and reading development, which figure strongly in educational policy, may appear to be simple common sense. But both ethnographic data and evidence from literary texts suggest that such paradigms offer, at most, a partial and ahistorical picture of reading. An important dimension, neglected in the dominant paradigms, is the irreducibly social quality of reading practices.     

Tracking the Truth or Selling One's Soul? Reflections on the Ethics of a Piece of Commissioned Research

This paper takes as its starting point a decision to accept a particular commission for a piece of educational research which is subject to contractual restrictions. In the light of recent debate on the contentious politics and ethics of contractual research, it then addresses the problem of what might constitute an ethical defence, or critique, of such research and such contracts.     

Girls’ Avoidance of ‘Hard’ Science Subjects—protest or a rational choice?

Abstract

The reasons why girls avoid science subjects were studied by comparing three groups of girls and three groups of boys in the Norwegian secondary school who opted for physics, biology/chemistry and non‐science subjects, respectively. On the basis of documented data on their level of attainment in science subjects, and questionnaire data on confidence in science achievement, attitudes towards the sciences and job priorities, the “hard’ science girls proved to be more confident and laid more stress upon income and leadership than the other groups of girls. No differences between the groups’ attitudes towards science were found. The ‘hard’ science group of girls performed better than the boys in the science subjects and they stressed the importance of income in their future job as much as did the boys. These findings suggest that girls make rational educational choices based on their perception of their own aptitude for science and on their future occupational plans.     

Dis(en)abled: legitimating discriminatory practice in the name of inclusion?

This article explores tensions between the policies and practice of inclusion and the lived experiences of disabled young people in education. Drawing on the narratives of two young men who participated in a small pilot study, it utilises theoretical concepts related to disability, structure and agency, and power and control, as it explores the ways in which inclusion can create subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) forms of exclusion. Focusing on the young men's experiences of further and higher education, it is argued that inclusive practices and policies, however well intentioned, can create new and subtle forms of marginalisation through the structures and discourse intended to address exclusion. I conclude by questioning whether, in a diverse and disparate society, in which all our lives are defined by the extent to which we are more or less equal than others, inclusion can ever be anything other than an illusory concept.     

Teachers’ leadership: a maker or a breaker of students’ educational motivation

Teachers’ leadership plays a critical and central role in students’ educational motivations. This indicates that, in the school context, a teacher’s leadership can have both positive and negative impacts on students’ educational motivation and performance. This article explores these assumptions, building on the path-goal theory, more specifically the effects of teachers’ leadership from students’ perspectives. Using a qualitative research design, this study collected data comprising 35 interviews with children and young people in both primary and upper-secondary school. The results show that the degree of teachers’ developmental leadership greatly affects students’ educational motivation and school performance. Two contrasting teachers’ profiles were found: teachers with a high degree of developmental leadership and teachers with a low degree of developmental leadership. Our findings suggest that teachers with the profile of a high degree of developmental leadership create an environment that fosters educational motivation positively among students, facilitating students’ achievement of high performance levels and a sense of well-being about their studies. In contrast, we show that teachers with a low degree of developmental leadership create an environment that is nonconductive for educational motivation, performance or the welfare of schoolwork.     

When Does a Researcher Choose a Quantitative,Qualitative, or Mixed Research Approach?

Interchange - In educational studies, the paradigm war over quantitative and qualitative research approaches has raged for more than half a century. The focus in the late twentieth century was on...     

Conquest or Reconquest? Students’ Conceptions of Nation Embedded in a Historical Narrative

This article focuses on university students’ understanding of the concept of nation. First an analysis of this concept from a historiographical point of view is presented. This allows for distinguishing between different conceptions of the nation related to 3 main approaches: the romantic, the modernist, and the ethnosymbolic approaches. Based on this analysis and also taking into account present research about history education and the construction of national identities, 5 different dimensions of the concept are presented: (a) historical subject, (b) identification, (c) territory, (d) legitimate claim, and (e) general concept scheme. Qualitative individual interviews were carried out with 31 Spanish college students about a Spanish foundational historical narrative, embedding the concept of nation, called the Reconquest (711 ad–1495 ad). Results indicated that although students showed tensions in their narratives, romantic conceptions dominated most of them. Possible reasons for the existence of these views are analyzed in terms of how the concept of nation is presented in and out of school. Also, implications for teaching and learning this concept are discussed, looking at learning strategies that could improve the understanding of this concept through its 5 analyzed dimensions.     

Theory of Mind: a Hidden Factor in Reading Comprehension?

Theory of mind is the understanding that other people have mental states that drive their actions and that those mental states can be different from one’s own. Without understanding theory of mind and being able to take others’ perspectives, it could be difficult for children to read and understand narrative texts. This paper posits that children’s understanding of others’ minds may be a potential missing piece in current accounts of reading comprehension. Indeed, the typical progression of children’s theory of mind abilities across childhood is closely aligned with the development of narrative processing skills. Furthermore, emerging evidence shows that both narrative processing and theory of mind are predictive of children’s reading comprehension, both concurrently and longitudinally. We present a possible explanation for why such a link exists and propose a causal framework of this relation in which increased ToM leads to increased understanding of and inferencing about characters’ mental states. Understanding characters’ mental states then leads to better reading comprehension. The framework makes novel, testable predictions and provides directions for future research.     

A sociology ‘of’ or a sociology ‘for’ education? The New Zealand experience of the dilemma

The sociology of education in New Zealand, as in other countries, is affected by the dilemma inherent to the discipline, namely: is it a sociology of education or a sociology for education? In this article I analyse three factors in which the dilemma is played out: ‘cultural oppositionism’ in the indigenous (kaupapa Maori) approach, critical policy research and the role of empirical research. I argue that a sociology for education is fundamentally weakened by its politicisation, a flaw not helped by the difficulties in drawing political goals from moral imperatives. In contrast a sociology of education, which uses the strengths of empirical research and theoretical analysis, offers the better hope of renewal for, what is, in New Zealand, a moribund discipline.     

Research and Teaching Revisited: a pre-Humboldtian or post-Humboldtian phenomenon? The cases of France and the UK

The evidence about the relationship between research and teaching at the level of doctoral education is far from conclusive. The focus of this study is to examine how teaching and research are related at doctoral level, especially when students' voices are heard, in two contrasting higher education systems — France and the UK. Models from Schimank and Winnes, and Clark were used to analyse the contrasting research and teaching configurations at institutional level in France and the UK. France has a Pre-Humboltian system of research and teaching, whilst the UK has a Post-Humboltian one. Two empirical studies were then drawn on: to measure teaching, a questionnaire composed of two major dimensions of research training experiences, supervision and research environment, was distributed to full-time doctoral students in Economics & Management and Chemistry in France and was compared to a survey carried out earlier in Education and Chemistry in the UK. To measure research, the result of the CNRS (National Centre of Scientific Research) research classification in France was used. In the UK, the corresponding measurement, RAE score (Research Assessment Exercise) was adopted. Strikingly similar findings were found in the two countries. First, there is little relationship between the departmental research performance and the quality of doctoral education as experienced by PhD students in either country. Next, this lack of significant relationship is found across all three disciplines. Thirdly, more consistent results were observed in France than in the UK. There is in-depth discussion with regard to these findings.