Preparing beginning teachers for inclusion: designing and assessing supplementary fieldwork experiences

Inclusive education requires restructuring educational provision so that mainstream schools are able to provide for the needs of all students in their communities. To help realise this goal, initial teacher education programmes need to better prepare new graduates for teaching students with complex special education needs, including students with intellectual disability. Concerns about the capacity of current school-based placements to prepare new teachers for inclusive classrooms have led some teacher education institutions to develop supplementary fieldwork experiences. The current study involved an investigation into such an experience and looked at the benefits to pre-service teachers (PSTs) of tutoring a young adult with intellectual disability. The findings indicate that PSTs learned effective strategies for differentiating a programme of work and, in their first year of study, were developing a teacher identity. The importance of aligning experiences with coursework units is highlighted and the need for valid assessments of how well initial teacher education programmes are preparing beginning teachers for inclusion, and what these assessments may look like, is discussed.     

Preparing teachers for a mobile world,to improve access to education

Recent statistics on the use of mobile technology proclaim that the world is becoming mobile. People use their phones to socialize, to conduct business, to search for information, and more. For the first time in history, people around the world have the potential to learn from any location at their own convenience. But first, education systems must change, to facilitate mobile access to education. As this article describes, the most important change will be training teachers, both in pre-service programmes and through professional development, to use the technology to design and deliver education and to create bridges to informal learning. The article also describes some projects around the world that are helping to prepare teachers for the mobile world, and some pilot projects using the technology. Most such research, however, is limited to short-term studies focusing on learners’ satisfaction with mobile learning. Future studies must consider its long-term benefits and its impacts on performance and retention. As mobile technologies emerge, teachers have to keep up with the changes so that they can take advantage of the power of the technology to design and deliver education.     

Preparing at-risk youth for a changing world: revisiting a person-in-context model for transition to employment

Background: The current global cohort of youth has been called ‘a generation at-risk’, marked by a dramatic rise in youth who are not in employment, education or training programmes. In 2010, youth were three times as likely as adults to be unemployed, with youth unemployment worsening in 2012 and 2013. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to examine educational structures that can promote greater labour market attachment and successful transition into employment for youth worldwide. Vocational and work-based education (WBE) has been identified as one of the most recommended and promising educational structures for curtailing youth under- and unemployment. However, WBE takes many forms, making it difficult to discern which WBE programme is most likely to meet the diverse needs of any individual at-risk youth. Moreover, there has been a dearth of theoretical conceptualisations to explain WBE as a context that promotes resilience for at-risk youth as they transition into the world of work.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a revised model for WBE as an enabling context for at-risk youth in transition from school to employment. Specifically, a person-in-context approach is used, situating youth-related facets (e.g. agency) in relation to systemic facets (e.g. political, cultural) to provide a comprehensive theoretical basis for WBE. The revised model maintains three overlapping domains – the individual, the social-cultural and the economic-political – to address a theoretical gap in the literature on transition systems while providing a foundation for practical efforts to prepare at-risk youth for engaging in a changing labour market.

Design and Methods: The model was constructed through a systematic and interdisciplinary integrative literature review that examined empirical, conceptual, policy-based and practice-based literature on at-risk youth transition from school to work. Articles and documents were analysed for both individual and contextual factors that influence transition, in order to contribute towards the development of a robust person-in-context model. Existing models of transition and other systems were also examined that addressed the needs of at-risk youth. A ‘person-in-context’ approach was selected for our model as it enabled representation of both macro- and microcosmic factors that shape effective WBE programming.

Conclusions: The model is organised around three critical domains that were identified as being influential for school-to-work transition: the individual domain, the social-cultural domain and the economic-political domain. Within each of these domains, multiple facets are described that shape youth transition. WBE is positioned at the centre of the model as an educational structure that can attend to the multiple facets that shape engagement in school and work. The paper concludes with an explicit research agenda linked to the model and practical implications for WBE programming.     

Welcome to the real world: reflections on teaching and administration

The author compares his former position as an assistant professor in a program preparing future teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students with his present position as an administrator of a public school program serving these students. He maintains that in some ways, teacher training programs in deafness and the public school settings hiring these graduates are separate worlds. The emphasis in teacher training programs appears to be on preparing graduates to work with deaf students in self-contained or residential school settings even though most teaching positions are with hard of hearing students mainstreamed in public schools. Other important areas, such as collaboration with general education teachers, litigation, parental relationships, and individualized education programs, seem to be overlooked by teacher training programs. The author employs the mockingbird metaphor from the novel To Kill A Mockingbird (Lee, 1960) to highlight differences between teacher training programs and public school settings, while making recommendations for strengthening connections between the two.     

Uncertainty in the real world

In this part of the article we have identified fuzzy uncertainty as being distinct from probabilistic uncertainty. We have understood the notion of a fuzzy set, and seen important operations that can be performed on such sets. Lastly, a geometrical interpretation of the fuzzy set and its attendant operations were discussed. In Part 2, we will develop a framework for reasoning based on fuzzy sets, and review a simple application.     

Managing uncertainty in the real world

In Part 1 of this article we understood the idea of a fuzzy set. We also reviewed simple operations such as fuzzy set intersection, union, and complementation, and related these to geometry. In Part 2, we extend the idea of fuzzy sets to explain how we may develop systems that reason with fuzzy sets using fuzzy logic. The idea of extending fuzzy logic to fuzzy engineering and fuzzy function approximation is explored with a working example. It is hoped that readers will be provided with enough motivation to appreciate the use of fuzzy set theory for real world applications.     

Connecting students to the real world: Developing gifted behaviors through service learning

Learning in today's classrooms can be disconnected from students' real world experiences. Providing students the opportunity to address real‐world problems may provide avenues for students to engage in their communities while developing academic skills and knowledge. Additionally, for students whose interests are piqued by the nature of their community's problems, these activities have the potential to offer students meaningful, motivating work in a supportive environment. This article explores how providing students with interest‐based service‐learning opportunities may help them develop and demonstrate gifted behaviors. In addition, methods for integrating student interests and service‐learning projects are presented. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Girls in Boys’ Public Schools: a prelude to further research

Traditionally Headmasters’ Conference schools have been concerned with both the reproduction of class relations and gender relations and have served an elite group of males. However, these schools are at present undergoing dramatic changes and by 1981, over half of the HMC schools admitted girls as well as boys.

The paper discusses the pressures and processes which led to the introduction of girls and uses interview data from a detailed case study as illustrative material. It is suggested that economic and social changes were important considerations and that the initial phases of the process can be understood in terms of the exploitation of a ‘dual student market’.     

论高职院校产学研结合与"双师型"教师培养

本文作者通过从深圳市几家从事通信产品开发和研究的高科技企业进行实地考察后认为:一方面,高职院校教师应该深入企业调研,寻找与自己专业相同的企业产品进行研发;另一方面,产学研结合是高等职业教育发展的要求,是培养教师"双师型"素质的好模式。文章对高职院校产学研结合的模式、产学研结合是培养"双师型"素质的有效途径等问题进行了具体分析和理论阐述。     

Preparing Australian Teachers to Teach Asian Studies: The importance of in-country experience

In 1997 and 1998 students entering primary and early childhood courses at a rural Australian university were surveyed about their attitudes towards the teaching of Asian Studies. This paper presents the results of this survey. It further considers the extent to which the students' prior study of Asian language, Asian Studies or their personal experience of travel in Asia influenced their views of the importance of teaching Asian Studies and their feelings of competence in teaching Asian Studies. Implications for teacher education institutions and education systems are explored.     

Scorched Earth: prelude to rebuilding Marxist educational theory

This paper focuses on the internal degeneration of the Marxist educational theory flowing from Bowles & Gintis (1976) and Willis (1977). It explores five interlinked ‘debilitating problematics’ ‐‐ the base/superstructure metaphor, Left functionalism, relative autonomy, resistance theory and the education for autonomy/revolution dilemma ‐‐ which have simultaneously formed the backbone of Marxist educational theory and constituted the roots of its theoretical weaknesses. The general argument is that these weaknesses are so deep‐seated that Marxists interested in theorising capitalist schooling need to start afresh. The paper points towards some possible starting points for new Marxist thinking on capitalist schooling, the preferred option being an analysis of labour‐power. One consequence of taking labour‐power as the starting point for a Marxist analysis of education is that it entails the dissolution of Marxist educational theory’. Instead, educational theory and politics become subordinated to a concern with the social production of labour‐power in capitalism.     

Preparing Counselors to Advocate for Social Justice: A Liberation Model

There are few pedagogical resources that describe how counselor educators can prepare counseling students to advocate for social justice. This article highlights a constructivist approach to social justice advocacy training called the Liberation Model. The principles of the Liberation Model are discussed, and recommendations for implementing the model in graduate counseling courses are provided. The purpose of the model is to help students develop the knowledge, awareness, and skills necessary for social justice advocacy.     

A real world comparison of the effectiveness of satellite training and classroom training

Businesses and educational institutions use satellite technology to transmit information for a number of purposes, including training. This study assessed the effectiveness of a satellite training program for achieving various learning requirements ranging from recognition and recall of information to the performance of a specific job procedure. This study also compared satellite training with traditional classroom training for two courses in which the same material was taught using both media. Results showed that learning occurred using the satellite medium and that there were slight but statistically significant differences between satellite and classroom instruction for learning job-related skills.Kristen M. Williams is a senior member of AIR's research staff specializing in training research and evaluation. The research reported here was conducted under Contract Number 104230-88-D-1811, Task Order Number 10430-92-D-1296 with the United States Postal Service. Opinions and conclusions presented do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Postal Service.     

Preparing for the world of diverse worldviews: parental and school stakeholder views on integrative worldview education in a Finnish context

The aim of this paper is to explore integrative worldview education as a platform for learning from worldviews in a diverse cultural context. This is done by exploring integrative worldview education in a Finnish secondary school context by examining the views of school stakeholders. The stakeholders examined in this article consist of 174 parents of the pupils and a total of six teachers and head teachers from two different lower secondary schools in Helsinki. We use the concept of learning from worldviews to examine the possibilities of the integrative classroom to facilitate learning from both personal and organised worldviews. The results indicate that the stakeholders view integrative worldview education as an important tool for widening the worldview of the pupil. Although the stakeholders view the sensitivity of the teacher as paramount in teaching an integrative classroom, integrative worldview education is also seen as important in offering tools for forging mutual understandings in an ever more complex world of worldviews.