Primary education, teachers’ professionalism and social class about motivation and demotivation of government school teachers in India

Since the early 1990s, significant progress has been made with regard to education in India. This positive development stands, however, in sharp contrast with the way in which government teachers themselves think and talk about education. Instead of feeling pride and satisfaction, many teachers are unhappy, and often self-critical. Based on focus group discussions and interviews with teachers in Andhra Pradesh, south India, this paper analyses the reasons behind motivations and demotivations of government school teachers. The paper concludes that there is a need for a new professional ethos and culture.     

Negotiating multiple identities between school and the outside world: a critical discourse analysis

This article examines interview talk of three students in an Australian high school to show how they negotiate their young adult identities between school and the outside world. It draws on Bakhtin's concepts of dialogism and heteroglossia to argue that identities are linguistically and corporeally constituted. A critical discourse analysis of segments of transcribed interviews and student-related public documents finds a mismatch between a social justice curriculum at school and its transfer into students' accounts of outside school lived realities. The article concludes that a productive social justice pedagogy must use its key principles of (con)textual interrogation to engage students in reflexive practice about their positioning within and against discourses of social justice in their student and civic lives. An impending national curriculum must decide whether or not it negotiates the discursive divide any better.     

International students in transnational mobility: intercultural connectedness with domestic and international peers,institutions and the wider community

International students’ connectedness with their peers, institutions and the broader community significantly affects their learning and wellbeing. It is important to understand their multiple desires for intercultural connectedness in order to nurture it. This paper analyses the motives and nature of international students’ intercultural connectedness. It is based on a study that includes more than 150 interviews and fieldwork with international students and staff from 25 vocational education colleges in Australia. Drawing on Blumer’s symbolic interactionism theory as a conceptual framework, the study found international students’ motivation to engage in intercultural connectedness is linked to not only their desire for respect and recognition for intellectual, cultural and linguistic capacities and diversities but also for employment aspirations. The research shows various dimensions in which intercultural engagement is seen to encompass not only empathy, sociability and equity but also employability. The findings suggest meaningful interaction is essentially bound to reciprocal learning.     

Learners' perceptions of the role of peers in a research experience: Implications for the apprenticeship process,scientific inquiry,and collaborative work

This study investigates the interaction between four pairs of high school students in a 7‐week national research apprenticeship program. Each student was interviewed about perceptions of experiences working with a peer in the same setting, and the resulting stories were analyzed. Through discourse analysis of the interviews and interrelated analyses of data from journals and responses on pre‐ and postprogram questionnaires, three types of support were identified that students experienced to varying degrees: social–emotional, social–technical, and social–cognitive. It is concluded that social–cognitive support is best engendered if there is sufficient similarity of problems and processes, and ample room for different results and debate about interpretation. Additionally, the culture and reward system students work within (i.e., classrooms) must encourage discussion of ideas and value an outsider's perspective, in recognition of the roles creativity, uncertainty, and ambiguity play in science. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 251–271, 2008.     

家庭因素对城镇初中生幸福感的影响研究

采用心理幸福感问卷、父母教养方式和家庭环境量表对950名城镇初中生进行问卷调查,发现(1)父母教养方式与城镇初中生的幸福感存在显著相关;(2)家庭环境与城镇初中生的幸福感呈显著相关;(3)母亲情感温暖理解、母亲惩罚严厉、父亲拒绝否认、家庭组织性、家庭知识性、父亲过分保护和父亲情感温暖理解能联合预测城镇初中生幸福感31.6%的变异量.从而得出,父母教养方式和家庭环境与城镇初中生的幸福感存在显著的相关,两者能够有效地预测城镇初中生的幸福感.     

The role of feedback in teacher mentoring: how coaches,peers, and students affect teacher change

ABSTRACT

Our study contributes to understanding teacher mentoring by exploring impacts of feedback from multiple mentoring sources as teachers with varying levels of experience learned to implement student-centered instruction. Mentees in our study learned to implement a student-centered model, supported by mentoring from students and teachers experienced in the model. We employed qualitative methods to collect and analyze data from two summer schools, with 22 STEM teachers and 47 student-instructors from 15 non-selective, public high schools. Findings include: (a) teachers had positive attitudes towards feedback, (b) feedback from multiple sources changed practice, (c) effective feedback required structure, (d) experienced teachers benefited most from feedback, and (e) student feedback was most valuable. These findings provide strategies to shape future mentoring, informing teachers, administrators, professional development coaches, and teacher educators about critical factors in the use of feedback to improve teaching through mentoring.     

Inequality of educational opportunity: the relationship between access,affordability, and quality of private schools in Lagos,Nigeria

Using data from a census of private schools in one of Lagos, Nigeria’s administrative jurisdictions, this paper explores the linkages between a heterogeneous sector of private schools and issues of school access, affordability, quality, and ultimately social mobility for households at the bottom of the income distribution. Although a large private education market has buoyed Lagos’s growth towards near-universal primary enrolment, this heterogeneous school sector appears to be providing socially stratifying paths towards educational attainment. We apply Lucas’s theory of effectively maintained inequality to assess the extent to which access to higher quality education services within the private sector is determined by cost. We find that higher-cost private schools provide students with greater opportunities to study in institutions with higher quality inputs and increased potential for progression within the educational system. As such, it is highly likely that these schools are primarily accessible to students at the upper ends of the income distribution.     

International students: language,culture and the ‘performance of identity’

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the multiple, intersecting identities expressed by international taught-post graduate students who are studying in a culture and language that is not their own. The study presented includes the collection of data around and beyond a planned pedagogical intervention on a pre-sessional EAP programme. The data were thematically analysed. Conflicting and intersecting identities emerged around themes of: performative, representational and core identities; international, national and individual identity; troublesome and transformative knowledge; power, agency and choice. These interwove with key underlying pre-occupations: language development; disciplinary knowledge and societal structures. By focussing on identity studies alongside the language and culture of academic contexts, international students developed an understanding of, and reflexivity around, their position within UK HE contexts. I argue this focus eased transition into a new study environment and allowed students to both better access the taught and hidden curriculum, and to understand their resistance to it.     

Art,ordinary work and conceptuality: sculpting the social relations of the art world

ABSTRACT

This research reveals the social relations of the art world through an investigation of visual artists’ ordinary art-making practices. Drawing on extended ethnographic research, the article attends to art and ordinary work, clarifying how visual artists’ work, is not only shaped socially and historically, but also reveals tensions about what counts as art and who counts as an artist. The article clarifies how today’s art world valorises conceptual approaches – centred on mobilising concepts and ideas, while devaluing expressivist approaches – centred on accessing intuition or inspiration. The article makes visible an increasingly conceptual, academic art world in which an expressivist practice is harder to sustain. By tracing shifting forms of work and shifting social relations, the study contributes to educational research on art, while calling attention to organisational processes that deeply shape artists’ lives.     

Pre-service teachers in an after school program: increasing understanding of students,communities, and teaching

The purpose of the After School Creative Expression Program (ASCEP) was to provide a short-term afterschool program focusing on the visual and written creative arts to a group of elementary school children attending a Title 1 school. Pre-service teachers attending a liberal arts university within the same geographic region developed lessons in writing and photography and served as afterschool educators for ASCEP. The program provided pre-service teachers a valuable experience outside the classroom. Findings demonstrate pre-service educators gained new insights from ASCEP that will impact their teaching practices during school. Overall, results show ASCEP provided future educators with valuable learning experiences and opportunities to connect more deeply with their students and their community.     

Internet of toys across home and early childhood education: understanding the ecology of the child’s social world

ABSTRACT

This article presents findings from an ongoing international study of children’s use of Internet-connected toys (IoToys) across Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Greece. The authors sought to investigate practices with IoToys across homes and early childhood settings. Data from 12 case study families and approximately 200 children who interacted with case study children in early childhood settings were collected alongside interviews with parents and educators. Findings indicate that digital difference between home and education is recurring due to infrastructure and budgetary issues in early childhood settings, resulting in organic play-based IoToy use at home versus structured adult-directed teaching of IoToys in early childhood practice. Working from a social-ecological theoretical frame however demonstrated that children skilfully and fluidly transitioned between digital and non-digital play and across diverse socio ecological contexts of home and early childhood settings.     

Amidst exclusion,promise, and violence: rural normal school students in Mexico and the disappearance of 43

ABSTRACT

On 26 and 27 September 2014, 43 students from the “Profesor Isidro Burgos” Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, disappeared, and six people died. In this article, I analyse the event as the result of long-term historical processes, from the perspective of the social mobilisation that caused the students’ disappearance on the one hand, and from the history of rural normal schools on the other. The starting point is to relocate political history within the history of education in order to understand the agency of political actors in the definition of educational processes, and the questioning of the reciprocal relations of school and state. The study is based on widely diverse sources: official documents from schools, statistics, news items from newspapers and social networks, and observations of the mobilisations of 2014. The disappearance of the 43 rural normal students is the result of a long process of abandonment in the countryside, of discrimination against young people of rural origin and Indians, all in the framework of a process of state dismantling which places teachers and normal students in positions of severe vulnerability.     

The process,dialogues, and attitudes of vocational engineering high school students in a web problem-based learning (WPBL) system

This study aims to explore how high school students collaboratively solve problems in a web problem-based learning (WPBL) system in an 8-week digital logic course using discourse analysis. Employing in-depth interviews, this study also investigated the students' attitudes toward the WPBL system. The number of teaching assistants' responses had a negative relationship with the number of peer responses. Regarding dialogue quality, extended questions and brainstorming stimulated each other. Elaboration facilitated problem solving, whereas organizing knowledge from books or websites decreased reflection. Students affirmed the usefulness and effectiveness of the web system because it created an interactive, flexible, comfortable and collaborative learning environment.     

The relation of social skills and school climate of diversity to children's life satisfaction: The mediating role of school connectedness

The present study examined the role of school connectedness in mediating the relations of social skills and school climate of diversity (SCD) to life satisfaction (LS) among school‐aged children. This study also investigated whether there is any gender difference in relationships. Participants included 873 elementary school students in Grades 4 through 6. The results of the structural equation modeling supported the partial mediating role of school connectedness, indicating that social skills and SCD lead to LS both directly and indirectly through enhanced school connectedness. Multigroup analysis demonstrated that the direct path from the SCD to LS was significant only for boys, while other paths are invariant across gender. Implications are addressed for school‐based interventions to promote school connectedness and LS.     

The bullied boy: masculinity,embodiment, and the gendered social-ecology of Vietnamese school bullying

This article considers the ways in which school bullying is both gendered and embodied. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two lower-secondary schools in northern Vietnam, the article focuses on the experiences of one ninth-grade boy, who was regularly bullied by his classmates, and whose experiences of bullying appeared to be embodied for all to see. Inspired by Arthur Brittan’s notion of masculinism, Elizabeth Grosz’s use of the möbius strip metaphor for understanding embodiment, and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s conceptualization of the ecological environment, I argue that school bullying needs to be understood not only in terms of the interactions between individuals or groups of individuals, but also in terms of the specific gendered social-ecological environment within which those interactions occur.     

Australian school practices and the education experiences of students with a refugee background: a review of the literature

Schools have the potential for significant impact on the lives of Australian students with a refugee background. Many of these young people speak at least one language other than English, have previous histories of interrupted schooling or have experienced trauma during times of displacement and forced migration. Combined with the further challenges of settling within an unfamiliar cultural frame, these students experience a range of circumstances which are not present for many of their Australian-born peers. Australian students with a refugee background have diverse skill and abilities, with many showing independence and resilience. Opportunities for academic learning and development of social capital within the school context can be enhanced with relevant pedagogy and policy which draws upon and highlights the positive individual qualities that these students exhibit. Australian school practices are shaped by both state and federal education policies, which are interpreted and applied by individual schools within their own frameworks. This review considers recent literature on the experiences of Australian students with a refugee background as they participate in schooling, with a focus on the ways in which schools provide either opportunities or barriers to engagement.     

The influence of the family,the school,and the group on the environmental attitudes of European students

The attitudes of young people arise from an intense interaction with their social groups of reference, and in this work we examine the extent to which this background conditions the individual environmental attitudes of the young. Using data provided by the PISA 2006 survey for the European Union, we test for the influence of the family, the characteristics of the school, and the social interactions or school peer group on attitudes toward the environment. The existence of social interactions, as well as the important role of family characteristics and school activities, are confirmed. The results allow us to emphasize the importance of the social context of the adolescent, and the need to take this into account as a channel that amplifies the influence of specific environmental education strategies.     

Society,individual, family,and school factors contributing to child mental health in war: The ecological-theory perspective

Mental health problems are common in war-affected areas, but children have different levels of vulnerability. Based on ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 2005), this study analyses how factors related to the child (cognitive capacity), their family (parental depression and parenting styles), and their school (teachers’ practices and peer relations) mediate the association between traumatic stress (traumatic war experiences and stressful life-events) and child mental health (posttraumatic stress and psychological distress symptoms). The participants were 303 Palestinian children (51.2% girls) of 10–13 years (M = 10.94 ± 0.50) and their parents from the Gaza Strip. The children filled in questionnaires during school classes and the parents did so at their homes. The results of structural equation modeling substantiated the hypothesis that parental depression, poor parenting and low-quality peer relations mediated between traumatic stress and children’s mental health problems. Contrary to the hypothesis, child-related factors did not mediate that association. To conclude, parents and peers provide important age-salient social resources for children in war conditions, and psychosocial interventions should therefore enhance their beneficial functions.     

The premise,promise and disillusion of the ADHD categorisation – family narrative about the child’s broken school trajectory

ABSTRACT

This study presents co-narrated school experiences of a young Finnish girl diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and those of her parents. The discourse analysis of the family interview focused on the discrepant ways family members gave meanings to and mobilised the ADHD categorisation while narrating their broken school trajectory. The results showed that the ADHD diagnosis was laden with the promise of the whole family being recognised differently by the school. However, this cultural promise proved disillusioning as daughter’s support needs and parents’ expertise were not recognised nor did the diagnostic category emancipate from stigmatising identities and blame. Interestingly, the parents leaned more on the diagnostic categorisation while accounting for the disillusion of these promises, whereas the daughter aimed at distancing herself from the ADHD category and behaviour characteristics related to it. The discussion concludes by comparing the viewpoints of cure and care when catering to children’s needs.