Spinning our wheels: reconceptualizing bullying beyond behaviour-focused approaches

Bullying behaviours remain common in schools despite an abundance of policies and programs aimed at curbing them. In this paper, the author argues that such policies and programs are problematic not because they are flawed in themselves, but because they draw from the dominant and usual ideas about what bullying is taken to be. These ideas are presented as more fundamental problems that contribute to ‘wheel-spinning’ where efforts to reduce bullying are concerned. Key concepts that inform such ideas, specifically safety and diversity, are interrogated. The paper advocates for a new framework by which to think about and conceptualize bullying that moves away from those that highlight behavioural and developmental perspectives. Implications for education administration, especially with regard to supporting marginalized students, are explored.     

Identity and Culture: theorising emergent environmentalism

This article critically examines the methodology and findings of the emergent environmentalism research project as reported in Environmental Education Research (EER), 4(4). We challenge both the ontological stance implicit in the research as well as its explicit epistemology. We argue for a wider theoretical underpinning to the research and specifically advocate the use of identity theories to explain personal and social phenomena. We also argue for the use of theoretical frameworks that empower rather than ‘capture’ cultural groups.     

Interdisciplinary expansion of conceptual foundations: Insights from beyond our field

The field of gifted education is very complex, covering broad and deep conceptual terrain. Insights about giftedness and talent are available from diverse academic disciplines and at multiple levels of analysis. These levels are captured in an interpretive framework that moves from the macrolevels of broad sociopolitical, cultural, and economic contexts through the levels of the immediate classroom context and psychology of the individual to the microlevels of organic structure, microbiology and the subatomic realm. From each level, examples of insights of possible relevance to gifted education are provided as illustrations of the potential an interdisciplinary and interlevel search has for expanding the conceptual foundations of the field.     

From crayons to perfume: Getting beyond contrived collegiality

Based on reflections from over a decade of research, scholarship, and programmatic applications, this article provides evidence of impact from the work of Professor Andy Hargreaves with a specific focus on his concept of contrived collegiality. Explorations into matters of emotion provided an entry point through which the author has addressed the potential for overcoming patterns of contrived collegiality. Early research resulted in a theoretical framework of emotional epistemologies which has been foundational to the design and delivery of professional development and master’s degree programs as well as further research into the evidence of impact from this approach to leadership development. The engagement with emotional meaning making, when treated as a way of building trust and developing collaborative learning communities, has proven a good match for the otherwise relatively contrived collegiality that Professor Hargreaves identified. Professor Hargreaves’ contributions to the author’s journey are a feature of the piece.     

他山之石：从陌生化到前景化

陌生化和前景化作为分属两个不同理论流派的重要术语,二者之间有一种继承和发展的关系,它们既有相同之处,更有本质之别。从语言层面上来看,陌生化主要关注违背语言常规的“失协突出”,而前景化既重视“失协突出”,又关注因过分遵守语言常规而产生的“失衡突出”,更为重要的是,它强调只有那些“有动因突出的”语言特征才具有文体价值,因此后者更为系统、全面,具有更大的理论意义和实用价值。经过这样的梳理和阐释,文体学界对陌生化和前景化存在的模糊认识就逐渐得到澄清。     

Deepening our Understanding of Praxis : Teacher educators' reflections on action research

Although a significant body of scholarship examines action research, little has been written about its pedagogical implications within preservice teacher education. This article highlights some of the challenges involved in teaching action research to preservice teachers. In analyzing contrasting cases of receptivity to change, the authors derive new insight from and about praxis, a concept that signals the dual nature of action research: understanding and action. Two of the cases described in the article represent resistance to the change orientation of action research. One of these cases is at the individual (teacher candidate) level and one is at the institutional (cooperating school) level. The other two cases are examples of a teacher candidate's and school's readiness for change. By using praxis as an analytic tool, the authors developed deeper awareness of the problems that teacher candidates can have with both understanding and action. They describe these problems and conclude with pedagogical insights they gained from this analysis.     

哈贝马斯“交往行动”概念的缺陷与启示

哈贝马斯"交往行动"概念内在要素表明,其交往行动理论是一种社会发展动力的"哲学假说",它只不过是以理论幻想的方式给资本主义社会提供诊断和治疗其弊端的温和谏言。尽管如此,交往行动理论也不乏给人有益的启示。     

From rhetoric to action: Implementing sts education through action research

This article outlines the arguments for an action research approach to the implementation of STS education, and describes some of the experiences and outcomes of an action research group of six teachers (one elementary, five secondary) based at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto. The teachers' initial views, and their changing perceptions throughout the duration of the project (the 1992-93 academic year), are presented in terms of four categories: the nature of STS education; the development of curriculum materials; personal/professional development; collaborative work. The emergence of an additional complex theme involving reinforcement, extending horizons, and building professional confidence, is considered the most significant outcome of the project.     

From blog to bebo and beyond: text,risk, participation

This paper broadly explores the notion that text is an artefact that encodes and displays the tensions, resistances, positioning and affinities of its producer and, further, that many of these drivers have their source in quite significant shifts in the broad contours of contemporary Western culture. Against this background, two different artefacts are analysed in this paper: a blog and a bebo page. The blog has been produced by an adult female academic and the bebo page by an early adolescent girl. These text producers and users are positioned quite differently in terms of geography, education, life experience, identity, social class and interests. They also have differential access to and experience of digital technologies. However, they both make use of the affordances of technologies, in particular Internet‐connected laptops and desktops, to create and disseminate these texts to do ‘work’ on their behalf in particular social domains.     

Transforming critical and participative teacher research into communicative action: a possible direction for teacher professional learning

ABSTRACT

This paper is an account of how a group of Japanese English language teachers, who questioned current teacher professional education and English language education reforms, learnt to challenge the dominant discourse and find ways of conducting more democratic teacher professional education. It describes how those teachers, including the author, generated a collective theory on communicative competence through the process of their inquiry. It explains how they came to appreciate the action research methodology used for this study, grounded in reflective practice, which in turn helped to develop the author’s understanding of second person action research. It also tells how the teachers learnt to take the initiative in communicating the thinking which informed their practices to others and began to engage in ‘communicative action’ As a result of these outcomes, the paper suggests a potential new form of teacher professional learning aimed towards more democratic relationships between participants. It is hoped that the implications of the research findings could contribute to broader discussions about policy pertaining to teacher professional development.     

取长补短共图发展

此文对业内企业之间面对教育装备市场的现状提出了联合拓展的理念,主要思想是扬长避短,互通有无,互为便利,以资源的虚拟整合为起点,逐步达到“联合共创”,做强做大之目的。     

Competency-based training and beyond: action research and reflective practice in vocational education and training

This article [1] analyses data from a national research project evaluating the contribution of competency-based training (CBT) to outcomes in vocational education and training (VET) in Australia. In the light of this analysis, it is argued that practitioners have an important and developing role as practitioner-researchers in industry settings, engaging in reflective practice and, indeed, in forms of action research. Moreover, it is argued that CBT provides opportunities for practitioners to develop and incorporate different models of education and training, often alongside the ‘standard’ CBT model for the benefit of trainees and the enterprises in which they work. Some implications for VET policy, practice and practitioner education are explored.     

Counselor Educator and Administrator: What Do They Want From Each Other?

Unfortunately, a relatively large majority of teachers, school administrators, and other school personnel view the counselor and his function in a vastly different perspective than do his mentors, the counselor educators. In an attempt to bring the academic world together with the world of reality (the school community), a workshop format was developed to provide counselor educators and top-level school administrators an opportunity to meet and to discuss issues of mutual concern. Although some of the issues generated would seem fairly commonplace in another context, here they served to bring about considerable rapport and good feeling between the counselor educator and the administrator. Indications are that further workshops be held to bring school people and counselor trainers together, to serve both the purpose of acquainting the school person with the counselor's perceived function, and to introduce the counselor trainer to the real problems of the school environment. Not of small significance are some of the misconceptions that administrators have concerning the activity of the school counselor, due in part to the lack of communication between administrator and training institution and vice versa.     

Teaching our Traveller children to read: an action research project

In both Ireland and the UK, Traveller children reportedly suffer the lowest rates of educational attainment of any group. This study aimed to promote evidence‐based practice in the teaching of reading to Traveller children and thereby to raise their levels of achievement. This involved teachers delivering an evidence‐based intervention over a specified time frame (three months) and collecting pre‐ and post‐intervention data. The project involved 11 teachers in ten settings. There were seven primary and two secondary schools and one Youthreach project involved in the study. Participants were in the age range 6–17 years. Research findings indicated that participants made very significant gains in reading, and their rates of progress compared well with best international standards. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Academic Women in the UK: Mainstreaming our experiences and networking for action

This article presents the experiences of women academics of management in the UK, who have used informal, collective strategies to move on, to mainstream their experiences and to challenge existing boundaries of management and their organisations. Having identified the repeating patterns of inequalities in management and management education as women academics, researchers and managers, the authors had to turn to action, to progress and to work on some solutions. This article explores the moving on process by presenting the experiences of women academics of management from two perspectives. Firstly, women academics' stories of their careers and their experience of management are outlined as an emancipatory consciousness-raising process. Secondly, the issues of moving on, taking action and challenging existing boundaries are discussed by means of a case study of a group of women academics who have chosen to question the confines of their working lives whilst gaining credibility in a changing context and driving some of the change for themselves. We offer the process we have engaged in as a strategy to support academic women to move on through critical reflection and action.