Analysis of the Dynamics among Tutors in an After-School Tutoring Program in a Homeless Shelter for Families

Researchers of after-school tutoring primarily focus on educational outcomes with little attention to the social dynamics of such programs. In our qualitative case study, we examined the nature of interactions among tutors in a tutoring program at a homeless shelter for families. Employing Bourdieu’s concepts of social capital and field, we found that the dynamics between tutors were complex, with tutors jockeying for position amid contestations over the rules and organization of the tutoring sessions. The implications include the significant impact that the dynamics among tutors can have on the overall program.     

From positivism to critical theory: school-community relations toward community equity literacy

In recent years, research on urban school–community relations has emerged with renewed vigor and a myriad of suggestions for how to best approach the topic. While most of these suggestions are anchored in positivist and interpretive epistemologies, a growing number of scholars are applying more critical approaches to school–community relations that center issues of equity and unequal power relations. However, these approaches are often perceived as being too impractical for educational leaders to implement. This article thus situates approaches to school–community relations across three epistemologies: positivism, interpretivism, and critical theory to make these ideas more accessible for educational leaders. With a focus on developing educational leaders to work equitably across school and community contexts, this article provides an operating framework for each approach that delineates assumptions, goals, views of families, strategies, and types of leadership. Finally, this article provides an epistemological grounding to propose that educational leaders develop what I call community equity literacy, and concludes with implications for future research.     

Improving Opportunities for Bridging Social Capital: The Story of a Full-Service Community School Initiative at an Alternative High School

Abstract

This article describes the collective efforts educators and multiple community partners are taking to transform one alternative urban high school into a full-service community school. The article presents preliminary findings on the opportunities for bridging social capital that the full-service initiative has created and the impacts such opportunities have for students in urban alternative settings with multiple risk factors stacked against them.     

A Latina mother on TV: challenges of intragroup advocacy for equity in a Latinx community

Abstract

This article analyzes a ‘critical race moment’ in an ethnographic study to examine intragroup advocacy in a diverse Latinx community. In this moment, a Spanish-language TV newscast used an image of the first author and her young son to report on local Latinx leaders’ advocacy to address disparities impacting the broader Latinx community. Informed by Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Race Theory, and Chicana Feminist Epistemology, this paper employs a unique analytical approach of unpacking a ‘critical race moment’ to examine the intragroup representative messages used by leaders. While their advocacy efforts led to investments in educational programming, Latinx leaders at times employed deficit ideologies about low-income, Spanish-speaking, immigrant Latinx families as they spoke to policymakers. Findings reveal the potential political binds Latinx leaders may encounter when they seek to advocate and speak for (rather than with) other Latinx community members in White dominant policy spaces.     

Community-based environmental monitoring goes to school: translations,detours and escapes

Community-school partnerships are an established practice within environmental science education, where a focus on how local phenomena articulate with broader environmental issues and concerns brings potential benefits for schools, community organisations and local communities. This paper contributes to our understanding of such educational practices by tracing the diverse socio-material flows that constitute a community environmental monitoring project, where Australian school students became investigators of and advocates for particular sites in their neighbourhood. The theoretical resources of actor-network theory are drawn upon to describe how the project – as conceptualised by its initiators – was enacted as both human and non-human actors sought to progress their own agendas thus translating the concept-project into multiple project realities. We conclude by identifying implications for sustaining educational innovations of this kind.     

Discussing Sexual Orientation and Gender in Classrooms: A Testimonial-Based Approach to Fighting Homophobia in Schools

Abstract

To fight homophobia in schools in Québec, many teachers rely on community organizations such as the Groupe de Recherche et d’Intervention Sociale (Research and Social Intervention Group) to address sexual diversity in class. This article documents major outcomes of these workshops as seen by students. Students identified topics related to sexuality and gender inversion as controversial, especially when involving men. The authors present how GRIS leaders decided to adapt intervention practices following such findings.     

Expanding an Action Research framework for an evidence based mentoring program in nursing: an exploration of cooperative inquiry

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the development of cooperative inquiry as a methodology for nursing research. It commences with a historical overview of Action Research and its use in nursing. The applicability of Action Research approaches in higher education are then discussed in the context of creating partnerships between universities, students and the wider civic and social community. The concept of partnerships informs discussion of a peer mentoring project for undergraduate nursing students conducted using a cooperative inquiry methodology.     

Community response in disasters: an ecological learning framework

Natural disasters are frequently exacerbated by anthropogenic mechanisms and have social and political consequences for communities. The role of community learning in disasters is seen to be increasingly important. However, the ways in which such learning unfolds in a disaster can differ substantially from case to case. This article uses a comparative case study methodology to examine catastrophes and major disasters from five countries (Japan, New Zealand, the UK, the USA and Germany) to consider how community learning and adaptation occurs. An ecological model of learning is considered, where community learning is of small loop (adaptive, incremental, experimental) type or large loop (paradigm changing) type. Using this model, we consider that there are three types of community learning that occur in disasters (navigation, organization, reframing). The type of community learning that actually develops in a disaster depends upon a range of social factors such as stress and trauma, civic innovation and coercion.     

Working within and against neoliberal accreditation agendas: opportunities for Professional Experience

Over the past decade in Australia, a neo‐liberal political climate has delivered to universities and schools increasing expectations concerning accountability and conformity within professional standards frameworks. This has contributed to growing pressure around Professional Experience programs within teacher education. In light of such accountability agendas, this paper analyses impacts arising from the emergence of institutions such as the New South Wales Institute of Teachers. In response to an insistent discourse of ‘partnerships’, it draws on the work of Lave and Wegner (1991 Lave, J. and Wegner, E. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]), as well as Engeström (1999 Engeström, Y. 1999. “Activity Theory and individual and social transformation.”. In Perspectives on Activity Theory, Edited by: Engeström, Y, Miettinen, R and Punamäki, R.‐L. 19–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]), to pose a reconceptualised model of Professional Experience based on the concept of Activity Systems. An approach to partnerships that structures Professional Experience in schools around the notion of ‘communities of learning’ is presented. By shifting power relations and roles around Professional Experience, it is claimed a co‐learning environment that more effectively and concurrently attends to the professional learning needs of student teachers, as well as those of practising teachers, can be developed.     

The management of education and the social theory of the firm: from distributed leadership to collaborative community

Modes of organisation and control within educational organisations have tended to accord with those of the workplace. Bureaucracy has endured in both. Of late, it has been loosened. This has opened up a new conceptual space within educational management and leadership. Its underlying theme is collaboration. The analysis here extends the space associated with concepts such as distributed leadership and system leadership. It draws upon the recent social theory of the firm proposed by Paul Adler and Charles Heckscher, and introduces their concept of collaborative community, a concept which when applied to educational administration re‐instates both trust and community as contributing to education, economy and society.     

Information literacy for first-year students: an embedded curriculum approach

The ability to access, evaluate and synthesise high-quality research material is the backbone of critical thinking in academic and professional contexts for Engineers and Industrial Designers. This is the premise upon which teaching and library staff developed Information Literacy (IL) components in Engineering & Industrial Design Practice—a first-year unit of study in the School of Engineering at the University of Western Sydney. This paper documents the IL teaching and learning experience and evaluates and reflects upon how effective it was at helping students navigate their first tertiary level research tasks. It concludes that library sessions and assessment tasks were effective in introducing IL skills in concurrent development of critical thinking, based on feedback from library sessions, an online IL test, and assessment results.     

我国创业投资的发展模式

对我国创业投资的发展模式进行了探讨。举出了我国创业投资的 5种主要资金来源 ,设计了我国创业资本的 4种组织形式 ,提出了政府对企业投资可以采取的 3种扶持途径和办法     

Lap Reading for Young at-Risk Children: Introducing Families to Books

Many at-risk children do not experience lap reading to the degree their more advantaged peers do. To investigate the effects lap reading might have on such children, three families with at-risk children were taught lap reading techniques and were provided with books for lap reading over a 12- to 16-week period. Changes in the children's behavior included choosing books and reading as free-time activities, developing positive attitudes toward books, and persisting in attending to books in the face of other activity choices. Additional outcomes included an increase in higher level questions asked by the children, some improvement in their oral language, and an increase in literacy-specific knowledge. Lap reading is recommended as a tool for parents to increase instructional motivation for their at-risk children.     

幼儿社会技能——进入儿童群体的重要社会标签

社会标签是社会、他人或社会组织给有关人员加上的一个身份证明,在儿童群体中以人缘的好坏来衡量。社会技能是个体经过学习获得的,从“同伴接纳”的角度分析,主要用于评定同伴接纳或者人际关系(如同伴社会测量地位)。幼儿社会技能是进入儿童群体的重要社会标签,社会技能的获得将促使幼儿良好的心理行为的发生。根据社会技能干预的理论,本文提出社会技能干预训练的方法,以帮助幼儿成功获得进入儿童群体的社会标签。     

Faculty Liaisons: an embedded approach for enriching teaching and learning in higher education

This paper explores the experiences of a group of academic developers who support educational development work as Faculty Liaisons at a large, research-intensive university. These academic developers inhabit complex ‘third spaces’, providing support through an embedded partnership relationship that requires lateral movement across functional and organizational boundaries to create new professional spaces, knowledge, and relationships. The authors utilize narrative inquiry and auto-ethnographic approaches to present an interpretive qualitative analysis of their experiences supporting Faculty and University projects across complex and evolving organizational boundaries. From this analysis, they highlight key roles and responsibilities associated with their blended context and identify challenges that academic developers who occupy third spaces within academic organizations face as they negotiate competing interests, identities, and requirements associated with the diverse range of their projects and the blended experience of working in scholarly and administrative, central- and Faculty-based roles. The lessons they have learned from these experiences will be of particular interest to academic developers who are experiencing the flux of change within higher education settings that are impacting teaching and learning practices both for faculty in the classroom and for those across the institution who support them.     

美国医学教育中的职业化问题:从证据到责任

职业化是维护公众对医学职业信任的核心要素,也是医患关系的本质所在.但有证据表明,公众对医学职业的信任日渐消失,医生也在维护医学职业价值观念时面临着各种挑战.本文在医学教育背景下界定"职业化"的定义和框架,描述了职业化面临的各种挑战,也详细论述了医学院校和教学医院在维护医学职业化过程中的角色和作用.此外,还评述了现行和试行中的评价职业化的工具、方法.最后,作者还提出一些建议供医学院校和教学医院参考.     

Japan's communal approach to teacher induction: Shokuin shitsu as an indispensable nurturing ground for Japanese beginning teachers

Sustaining beginning teachers has been one of the greatest challenges in some countries such as the U.S. In contrast, Japan sustains their teachers with the low attrition rate of 1.35%. This qualitative study aims to examine how Japan supports beginning teachers by examining shokuin shitsu or the teachers' room. Results from the qualitative study revealed the critical role that the teachers' room played for novice teachers as a place to exchange necessary information among colleagues, to develop collegial relationships with one another, and to provide a safe environment to make sense of beginning teachers' questions.