“Maybe That Helps Folks Feel Better About What They're Doing”: Examining Contradictions Between Educator Presumptions,Student Experiences,and Outcomes at an Alternative School

The use of alternative schools as exclusionary discipline for students found guilty of committing behavioral infractions raises questions about the effectiveness of these schools in producing improved student outcomes. Educators' justifications for alternative placements are highly relevant, because decisions regarding placements are often subjective and based on ill-defined criteria. This mixed-methods study investigates educators' perceptions of one disciplinary alternative school in the Southeast and educators' justifications for its use. The study examines the district's alternative school students' outcome data and analyzes whether these data support educators' explanations for why they assign students to the alternative school. Findings show that educators often hold mixed beliefs about alternative schools, seeing them as both a punishment and as providing needed support and services. Students, however, do not demonstrate dramatically different academic or behavioral performance as a result of their placement, bringing into question educators' justifications for placing students in these schools.     

Elementary school parent engagement efforts: Relations with educator perceptions and school characteristics

School efforts to engage parents are posited to influence whether and how they are involved in their children's schooling. The authors examined educators' engagement efforts in beginning reading, their subjective evaluations of engagement practices, and beliefs about parent involvement, in two stratified samples of New Zealand elementary school educators. They explored whether educators' ratings supported multidimensional and multitiered theoretical models of engagement. The authors invited responses from elementary principals and teachers, given their different roles in the nested ecology of schools and relationships with parents, and examined associations between pairs of principals and teachers working in the same school. Finally, the authors examined relations among educators' engagement efforts, evaluations of engagement practices, and beliefs about involvement, and school characteristics including community socioeconomic status, size of school population, ethnic composition of school population, community size, and geographic region.     

Implementing professional development in invitational education

Abstract

The professional development of educators is seen as an ingredient essential to creating effective schools and raising learners' performance. Since educators have the most direct contact with learners, and considerable control over what is taught and how it is taught, it is reasonably assumed that enhancing educators' knowledge, skills and attitudes is a critical step towards improving learner performance. To ‘reculture’ schools according to the philosophy of Invitational Education in order to increase learner performance means to develop collaborative work cultures that focus, in a sustained way, on the continuous preparation and development of educators in relation to creating favourable learning conditions for all learners. Moreover, the aim of Invitational Education is to create an entire school environment that intentionally invites success for everyone in the school. This article attempts to explain key factors that may influence the effective implementation of Invitational Education as an example of professional development for educators. The following major categories are described: learning styles of educators; educators' commitment to change; transformational leadership; out-of-school conditions; in-school conditions; and requirements of programmes.     

Examining School Psychologists' and Teachers' Application of Approaches Within a Response to Intervention Framework

Approaches consistent with a Response to Intervention (RTI) framework are becoming increasingly prominent. The present study is a preliminary investigation aimed at gaining a greater understanding of educators' knowledge of RTI and application of RTI principles. It serves as the first step toward understanding educators' preparation to implement these mandated changes. Educators (308) completed an online study to assess their knowledge of tasks inherent in RTI procedures. Respondents were asked to rate their familiarity with RTI principles. Then, respondents were asked to interpret graphical data that were consistent with RTI screening and progress monitoring approaches. Overall, results indicated that the majority of educators perceived themselves as having the knowledge to implement RTI practices. However, when asked to apply RTI-consistent principles, not all were successful. Specifically, school psychologists were better at interpreting and making decisions based on graphical data relative to general and special education teachers. There may be a disconnect between the expectations inherent in an RTI model and teachers' ability to meet these expectations. School psychologists may be positioned to support teachers in this area. The implications of these results for implementing RTI practices and developing professional development programs for general and special educators in elementary schools are discussed.     

School district administrators’ perspectives on the professional activities and influence of special educators in Norway and Sweden

The purpose of this study is to investigate school district administrators' perspectives concerning the professional activities and influence of special educators in Norway (n?=?266) and Sweden (n?=?290). We examine three themes drawn from a survey of practices and policies in each country: (a) the organisational arrangements in which special educators work, (b) perceived changes in special educators' activities, and (c) ratings of special educators' influence on the content of instruction and the availability of resources for children with special needs. Findings suggest that special educators frequently work in teams, function largely as advisors, and spend less time working with individual students than in previous years. There appears to be a more pronounced increase in special educators’ time devoted to advising and documentation in Sweden than in Norway. Swedish special educators were also more frequently described as working in multidisciplinary teams. Participants in both countries rated the influence of special educators significantly higher than that of parents and teachers on the availability and distribution of resources; and significantly higher than politicians, public officials, teachers, and parents with regard to influence over the content of instruction. We discuss these findings in relation to the goals and development of inclusive education in Scandinavia.     

Educators’ Perceptions of Student Digital Citizenship Practices

Abstract

Digital citizenship, defined as exhibiting appropriate and responsible behavior with digital technology use, is an essential component of technology education. The purpose of this study was to examine K-12 educators’ perceptions of their students' digital citizenship knowledge and practices as they relate to cyberbullying, digital footprint, digital privacy, digital netiquette, and digital identity. One hundred and seven educators responded to a survey on digital citizenship practices. Based on the educators' perceptions, student understanding and practice of digital citizenship were rated as not well for most of the items on the survey. While educators' perceptions of their students' digital citizenship practices did not vary among school levels or based on their roles as teachers or technology coaches, educators who taught digital citizenship had higher perceptions of their students' digital citizenship practices.     

Conceptualisations of disability and inclusion: perspectives of educators of young children

This grounded theory study explores beliefs about disability and inclusion from the perspectives of educators of young children in their respective roles as elementary school teachers and early childhood educators, in Ontario, Canada. The social relational model described by Reindal is used as a theoretical framework for interviews with four educators. The interview data provide a theory of educators' beliefs and show the relationship of the beliefs to their practice. Implications based on the theory are presented for both policy and professional development.     

Keeping Schools Out of Court: Legally Defensible Models of Leadership

This paper draws attention to a knowledge gap in leadership models regarding bullying, particularly cyberbullying, an emergent form of student harassment. Given that parents are suing schools for failing to protect victims of bullying, educators need guidance in addressing harassment and discriminatory discourse in popular youth culture.

The focus is on three important considerations: (1) the need to avoid criminalizing children and adolescents; (2) the need to clarify educators' legal obligations to protect students from psychological harm; and (3) the need to delimit educators' legal obligations to sustain school environments that reduce bullying and create equal opportunities for learning. Improved law-related courses, grounded in compatible theories on leadership, social justice, and ethics of care, are recommended for education students. Educators who take courses in these disciplines show great promise in helping schools navigate the unprecedented dilemmas of technology and pluralism through ethical and legally defensible alternatives.     

Professional Development Schools: New Opportunities for Training School Counselors

The authors examine how counselor educators can become involved in professional development schools to create enhanced training opportunities for school counseling internship students. The benefits of collaboration between university and public school faculties are explored, and research opportunities are discussed. Counselor educators' expertise in research and program evaluation, combined with school counselors' pragmatic experience in dealing with real‐life issues, may promote best practices in the schools and improved training for school counselors and can set the stage for collaboration as an educational team at the preservice level.     

Return to school after acquired brain injury in the UK – the educators' perspectives

Childhood acquired brain injury (ABI) is associated with poorer life outcomes. Increasing numbers of children and young people are surviving severe brain injury and returning to mainstream schools with multiple impairments. It is widely acknowledged that for these children, their school becomes by default their rehabilitation centre. International studies of this transition and a recent UK government report criticize educators' inconsistent implementation of support strategies, lack of educator training and poor communication between clinicians, educators, child and family. The educators' perspectives of the return-to-school are, however, not well represented in the literature. This study therefore explored the experiences of educators in the UK (N = 10) who had recently facilitated a return-to-school of a child with ABI aged 8–12 (N = 5) using semi-structured interviews analysed by data-driven thematic analysis. The findings highlight common experiences: a continuum of intensive problem-solving with heavy reliance on the Special Educational Needs Coordinator; educators valuing collaboration with clinical specialists in context over general ‘training’; uncertainty over the validity of implementing support strategies from prior teaching experience; uncertainty about how to support the child's emotional needs; and frustration with UK statutory processes for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Recommendations are made for changes to practice and future research.     

The personal struggles of ‘national’ educators working in ‘international’ schools: an intercultural perspective

This paper looks at how personal struggles associated with the overseas setting caused changes in the intercultural perspective of 30 Anglophone educators working in international schools. Situated within a social constructivist framework, interview methods were utilised to build a collective narrative shared by educators. Findings reveal that although prolonged exposure to new cultural norms elicited changes in intercultural perspective, these changes were not related to traditional notions of cultural immersion but – rather paradoxically – to educators' inability to integrate into the host cultures. Obstacles educators faced while abroad included a lack of language proficiency, living in countries that were sometimes antithetical to Western ideals and discriminatory practices based on national and/or race affiliation.     

Understanding Afro-Caribbean educators’ experiences with Englishes across Caribbean and U.S. contexts and classrooms: Recursivity, (re)positionality,bidirectionality

This interpretive qualitative study describes the experiences of six Afro-Caribbean multilingual educators with Englishes across Caribbean and United States contexts and classrooms. Findings showed how confidence vs. doubtfulness and resistance vs. acceptance seemed visible in the educators' use of Englishes based on the expectations of others and how distance vs. closeness and negative vs. positive feelings were reflected in educators' learning about their use of Englishes. Overall, the findings suggest that the educators' experiences were characterized by recursivity, repositionality and bidirectionality. Recursivity seemed evident because the educators moved back and forth in their thinking about Englishes, English ideologies, and between conflicts about these ideologies in their experiences across Caribbean and U.S classrooms. Repositionality seemed visible in their increasing acceptance of non-standardized Englishes for ‘outer circle’ classroom instruction and through shifts in their ideologies about English as moved back and forth across ‘inner’ and ‘outer circles,’ both via various digital technologies and by way of their physical movement across geographic boundaries. Bidirectionality appeared to be present in the impact of educators' ideologies about Englishes on ‘inner circle’ speakers, and the impact of ‘inner circle’ speakers' ideologies about Englishes on educators. This study raises questions about the ways in which educators' Englishes function as they interact with English speakers in the United States.     

General and Special Educators' Perceptions of Preassessment-Related Activities and Team Members

The purpose of this study was to investigate the status of school preassessment teams in a midwestem state. Specifically, the study sought to determine perceptions of actual and preferred preassessment-related team activities and preferred permanent team members. This was accomplished through a preassessment questionnaire, distributed to randomly selected state-certified general and special educators, which was designed to identify general and special educators' actual and preferred rankings of preassessment-related activities. Survey results revealed agreement between general and special educators about their preferred permanent team members. Results of this investigation are discussed relative to their relation to prior studies of preassessment teams and directions for future research.     

The influence of the ecological contexts of teacher education on South Korean teacher educators' professional development

This study is designed to explore how the ecological context of teacher education influences affect South Korean teacher educators' professional development. Research findings reveal that South Korean teacher educators' concerns about their professional development are mainly related to conducting research influenced by global, political, social, and institutional influences together. The global influences permeate lower contextual levels in order and appear as concrete policies affecting teacher educators' work. As a result of an environment that favors academic achievement in various levels of the ecological contexts of teacher education, South Korean teacher educators desire more international academic communication.     

Educators' Beliefs About Risk and Prevention: The Context for Changing Practice

This study describes the results of a survey of beliefs about risk, prevention, and early school failure held by a sample of highly experienced educators in the state of Virginia. The results indicate that risk is a widely used concept and have varied meanings, many of which are only marginally related to prevention and early intervention. There appears to be a gap between what educators identify as risk factors for early school failure and what they perceive to be the role of the schools in reducing early school failure. Finally, despite misconceptions regarding the concepts of risk and prevention, educators appear open to service delivery systems based on these concepts. The results are discussed in terms of the possible need to address educators' beliefs about risk and prevention prior to attempting to change practice.     

Enhancing environmental educators' evaluation competencies: insights from an examination of the effectiveness of the My Environmental Education Evaluation Resource Assistant (MEERA) website

To conduct evaluations that can benefit individual programs as well as the field as a whole, environmental educators must have the necessary evaluation competencies. This exploratory study was conducted to determine to what extent a self‐directed learning resource entitled My Environmental Education Evaluation Resource Assistant (MEERA) can enhance environmental educators' evaluation competencies. The multiple case studies relied on data from eight environmental educators with limited evaluation experience who used MEERA to evaluate one of their programs. Results suggest that MEERA can (1) increase environmental educators' perceived evaluation competencies, (2) help environmental educators produce quality evaluation outputs, and (3) foster their use of evaluation results. Perceived benefits of using MEERA included obtaining evidence of program success, insights into how to improve programs, and alternative ways of thinking about programs. Perceived challenges included varying difficulties with evaluation tasks such as prioritizing evaluation questions and designing data collection instruments and, in line with this, desiring personal expert assistance for context‐specific advice and reassurance. This research contributes to expanding understanding of how to enhance environmental educators' evaluation competencies and practices.     

Attitudes toward mainstreaming: A status report and comparison of regular and special educators in New York and Massachusetts

Four hundred regular and special educators from New York (a categorical labeling state) and Massachusetts (a noncategorical labeling state) were surveyed on their mainstreaming attitudes and perceptions of handicapped exceptional children. Among the topics investigated were educators' attitudes toward the effects on these children of different educational placements, their reactions to integrating these children into regular classrooms, their knowledge of their special education responsibilities, and their inclusions in their building-level special education processes. Results, implications, and future research directions are discussed, so that services to handicapped exceptional children can be improved and implemented.     

Sexual and reproductive health education: opinions of students and educators in Bolgatanga municipality,northern Ghana

There have been few assessments of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education programmes in sub-Saharan Africa from the students' and educators' perspective. This study examined students' opinions on an SRH programme in northern Ghana and explored the facilitators and barriers for educators regarding the implementation of the programme. The sample comprised 147 students and 3 educators. Questionnaires were used to collect data from students, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with educators. According to the students, the SRH programme was both important and interesting. Their expectations were moderately well met. They agreed that the main objectives of the programme and most of the objectives regarding the ‘family planning’ sessions had been achieved. Significant differences were found for school type, age and religion, but not for gender. For the educators, important facilitators were a clear manual, the presence of foreign volunteers working as educators, the increased influence of new media, students' eagerness to learn, and the feeling that the SRH programme really benefited students' lives. Important barriers were traditional and cultural influences, lack of funding and poor scheduling of the programme within the schools. The paper concludes by offering recommendations regarding the implementation of future SRH programmes in Ghana.     

So,What About the Professional Development of Teacher Educators?

The first part of this paper discusses incentives for teacher educators to engage in professional development. It proceeds by proposing practical examples of how teacher educators' professional development is initiated by the individual teacher educator and takes place outside the teacher education institution. However, systematic professional development is needed within the teacher education institution, as an integrated part of the teacher educators' work responsibilities. The many problems related to professional development are highlighted at the end of the paper. The paper addresses a neglected area in the literature on teacher education.     

EXPERIMENTS in induction: new approaches to the probationary year*

Abstract

Feedback from educators in England, Scotland, and the Republic of Ireland was obtained regarding the performance of U.S. student teachers in the schools of these nations. Reported in this paper are the educators' observations and beliefs pertaining to topics such as the professional and cultural/social strengths of U.S. student teachers; major cultural/social ‘mistakes’ often made by U.S. student teachers; ways in which they could better prepare for classroom teaching assignments in overseas schools; goals motivating them to seek placements in overseas schools; and ways in which the foreign pupils benefitted from the U.S. student teachers. Based on the feedback, recommendations are offered to student participants and university/college faculty for the improvement of teaching experiences in overseas nations. In addition, the need for internationalizing teacher education programs in the United States is recognized.