The changing experiences of primary teachers: responding to scenarios involving diverse sexualities

Sex education and diverse sexualities are controversial topics within the primary school arena. Concepts of childhood innocence have influenced sex education curriculum, policy development and teaching practices within schools. However, research shows that primary school-aged students are aware of and talk about sexualities. The aim of this research is to reveal the pedagogical experiences of primary school teachers in relation to scenarios inclusive of diverse sexualities. Social constructionist theories of pedagogy and phenomenographic methods are used to provide a detailed analysis of the ways in which primary teacher participants conceptualise their encounters with students who introduce concepts of diverse sexualities. This research reveals that primary students ask questions about diverse sexualities, they use homophobic expressions (often as a daily occurrence), they sometimes reveal homosexual feelings to teachers, some have same-sex parents and some are being raised with knowledge of diverse sexualities. Without comprehensive policy and curriculum support, and appropriate professional learning for teachers, teachers are unable to make well-informed pedagogical decisions that promote inclusive education.     

The danger of subverting students’ views in schools

This paper is firmly grounded in the position that engaging with students’ voices in schools is central to the development of inclusive practices. It explores the tensions that can be created when efforts are made to engage with students’ voices in relation to their experiences of learning and teaching. An example from a three-year research and development project, which worked alongside teachers to use students’ voices as a way of developing inclusive practices, is used to illustrate these tensions. This project, though showing that students’ voices can be a powerful means for understanding learning and teaching in schools, also encountered challenges with these processes. This paper focuses on the experiences of one secondary school which (possibly inadvertently) subverted and undermined students’ voice initiatives and explores the potential negative impacts of this on individual students, on students as a whole, and on teacher development. By doing this, suggestions as to how such tensions can be avoided in schools are offered, with the aim being to allow a genuine engagement with the views of students.     

On-line writing: a link to learning in a teacher education program

This paper examines the use of on-line discussion as a medium for learning in a pre-service teacher education program. As part of an Education Studies course student teachers engaged in a discussion of issues related to technology and equity in schools. The design of the task and the subsequent analysis of the on-line text were part of a research project investigating whether and how communications technology can be used to integrate and extend the learning of teacher education students. The main argument developed in the paper is that through the on-line activity distinctive sets of writing practices were created. These practices enabled students to make connections between the often disparate parts of teacher education programs—theory and practice, campus and school, research and experience.     

On Teacher Quality in Independent Schools

Independent schools pride themselves on providing a unique educational experience for students, one that is robust and mission-driven and capitalizes on lower student-to-teacher ratios that allow for more personalized learning and high-quality teachers. Numerous studies measure teacher effectiveness in public schools, yet there is little research on teacher quality in independent schools. This study finds that independent schools use four key characteristics to describe high-quality teachers: (a) strong relationships with students, (b) strong pedagogical knowledge and content expertise, (c) a growth mind-set, and (d) the ability to fit well within the school's culture. We also examine school practices and find that some commonly used activities for recruitment and selection are intended to identify the key characteristics of high-quality teachers. Administrators use demonstration lessons and interviews to assess candidates’ abilities to develop strong relationships with students and their pedagogical knowledge and content expertise. However, we find that practices around teacher evaluation are inconsistent.     

Shifting South African learners towards greater autonomy in scientific investigations

This report describes how teachers support ninth-grade students who are doing scientific investigations in Natural Sciences in South African schools. This is of interest as allowing students to participate in inquiry-based investigations is a significant shift from traditional practices. It presents a new challenge to teachers as it signals an opportunity to shift from a teacher-centred to a student-centred approach in practical inquiry. The research study adopted a mixed methodology research design that involved the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data were collected by means of questionnaires that were administered to 55 teachers. Qualitative data were collected by means of five classroom observations of student investigations and in-depth teacher interviews. The analysis of all the data revealed that teachers believe in providing support and not allowing learners to discover for themselves when participating in investigations. Teachers use a number of support strategies depending on the stage of the investigation. Based on these findings, a learning progression of teacher support for increasing learner autonomy was formulated which teachers can use in guiding them in the use of appropriate support strategies as they shift students towards greater autonomy in doing investigations.     

Teaching Quality Across School Settings

Districts are increasingly making personnel decisions based on teachers’ impact on student-achievement gains and classroom observations. In some schools, however, a teacher’s practices and their students’ achievement may reflect not just individual but collaborative efforts. In other settings, teachers’ instruction benefits less from the insights and support of their colleagues. This article analyzes multiple measures of teacher and teaching quality for 24 language arts teachers in New York City who teach in different types of school environments. Teachers in different value-added quartiles were observed and scored using two protocols, PLATO and CLASS. Schools were categorized as more and less functional using Department of Education environment grades. To compare the practices of higher and lower value-added teachers in more and less functional schools, we conduct MANOVAs of observation scores and use qualitative coding of field notes. We find value-added measures and observation protocols provide confirmatory information in less functional schools but provide contradictory information about teacher quality in more functional schools. Implications for teacher education, policy, and future research are discussed.     

Promoting Student Engagement Through Evidence-Based Action Research With Teachers

We present findings from a group-randomized teacher action research intervention to promote academic engagement and achievement among elementary school students. Eighteen teachers from 3 elementary schools were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups. Intervention teachers studied evidence-based instructional practices that cultivate academic engagement and conducted an action research project to implement selected practices in their classrooms. Control teachers participated in a self-study group and read about evidence-based practices to promote student engagement. Teachers in the action research group reported using more group-based instruction than self-study teachers. Students with initial low engagement and low reading grades demonstrated greater gains in these outcomes in action research classrooms than self-study classrooms. Implications for teacher development and the promotion of student academic outcomes are discussed.     

Turnaround Policy and Practice: A Case Study of Turning Around a Failing School with English-Language-Learners

In an era of school reform and high stakes accountability, the major challenge in education is to turnaround the nation’s lowest-performing schools. National policy provides abundant resources with often restrictive prerequisites. Research indicates that quality principals and teachers are the most important factors for turning around the lowest performing schools; however there is little research in how to turnaround failing schools with high enrollments of students in poverty, who are English-Language Learners, and who are Hispanic. The purpose of this study is to understand how demography, policy and practices affect the educational edge of students in poverty, who are English-Language Learners, and who are Hispanic. How do the practices of a school leader who is professionally/culturally/linguistically responsive affect turnaround for a failing schools? How does the personal and professional background of a Latino principal affect student performance in a failing school? This research conducted a qualitative case study to include principal interviews, principal observations, teacher interviews, and the use of state and school archival data. Analyses included organizing data into data themes and triangulating data themes, using principal background, principal professional/cultural beliefs and practices, school context, teacher data, and archival data. Conclusions confirm the need to conduct research to document and define the performances for professionally/culturally/linguistically responsive principal models and their effect on student performance in historically failing schools. In addition, policymakers need to consider the organizational contexts of professional/culturally/linguistically responsive leadership and teaching models as turnaround school models.     

Silence speaks: Whiteness revealed in the absence of voice

In this hybrid article, the author attempts to weave together the theoretical implications of whiteness theory and a theorizing of silence on teacher education practices, research with her own students that explored these implications, and reflections on her own pedagogical practices and location as a white teacher educator teaching about race and diversity. In teacher education courses intended to explore issues regarding the implications of diversity in schools, silence is often encountered in work with white students who have not examined their identity in the context of a racial discourse. This article explores the nature and intent of these racially inhabited silences that emerged in two teacher education courses comprised predominately of white preservice teachers.     

French teachers' intentions to use accommodated materials in learning and assessment

The implementation of inclusive practices in mainstream education remains particularly difficult in the French context and is influenced by various factors including the types of disability labels, and the type of assessment practices that are used. Indeed, how student disability is labelled could impact teacher attitudes by notably disfavouring students labelled with autism. Moreover, normative assessment is strongly linked with selection at schools—a function that works against teacher attitudes towards inclusive education. This article reports on a study in which we examined teacher intentions to use materials accommodated to special educational needs students, as a function of special needs labelling. Specifically, this refers to the use of labels for either a disability or special educational need, in connection to tasks associated with learning or assessment. The results of our study revealed that, for both types of labels, the intentions to use accommodated materials are lower when teachers are asked to assess student competence than when prompted to teach this competence. These findings are discussed with consideration to the incompatibility between selection in schools—which is aligned with the principle of meritocracy—and efforts to promote inclusive education practices.     

Teachers’ work in culturally and linguistically diverse schools

Teachers in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms work in highly charged contexts where policy, curriculum, student backgrounds, equity issues and pedagogical expertise provide both resources and constraints. Often, these classrooms are in underachieving schools in low socio-economic areas. This study investigated one school in Melbourne where teachers struggle to balance subject content and the language and literacy needs of their students. It addresses a serious gap in research on teachers in such schools by combining a theoretical model of job demand and control, and an explicit focus on teaching literacy in a culturally and linguistically diverse school. Using data from teacher focus groups and written reflections, the study illustrates the spectrum of conflicts teachers grapple with in their daily work, including issues of workload, time constraints, institutional practices and social and cultural practices which tend to isolate and disempower them. The findings support the need for a deeper differentiation of school contexts in language teacher research. The analysis also has implications for a range of strategies to build more autonomy into teacher work and to retain good teachers in schools where they are most needed.     

Towards an understanding of the place of ethics in school-based action research in the United Kingdom

As school-based action research has taken a higher profile in UK schools, the place of ethics warrants particular attention. This paper draws on evidence from a taught online Master of Education course collated via chat room discussion where 53 researching teachers were asked to explore policy within their own institution regarding school-based action research ethics. None of these teachers identified the existence of any such policies but described instead current practices. We analysed their reported school-based action research practices and discovered three major categories of response: the unexamined use of gatekeepers; the unsupported use of existing ethics guidelines (such as those of the British Educational Research Association); and the conflation of legal and ethical demands by schools. We raise questions relating to the relationship between ethics and education and call for all those involved in school-based action research to take part in developing action research ethical policy in school.     

Fostering an Adolescent-Centered Community Responsive to Student Needs: Lessons Learned and Suggestions for Middle Level Educators

Young adolescents have unique basic and developmental needs. Middle level educators are best able to reach and teach young adolescents when they understand students’ needs and when the school environment, including its organizational structures and teacher practices, are responsive to these needs. Findings from a recently conducted qualitative case study indicate that middle level organizational structures, coupled with active, hands-on teacher practices, helped educators promote an adolescent-centered community where students felt cared for and perceived learning as both fun and educational. We highlight lessons learned from the study, including the importance of being responsive to student needs and promoting an adolescent-centered community. We then suggest ways middle level educators can foster such responsive communities in their own schools through maximizing the use of organizational structures and implementing active, hands-on teacher practices.     

Japan’s educational practices for mathematically gifted students

This study documents the inclusive, deliberate, and unintended educational practices in Japan for mathematically gifted students. It also aims to identify various schools’ strengths and challenges in improving the mathematics education of these students. Case studies with multisite designs were undertaken in five middle schools selected using purposive sampling. Mathematics education practices – assessed in terms of assessment, mathematics instruction, support and interventions, and teachers’ collaboration – guided the data collection and analysis. The primary goal of this study was to describe current school practices and identify common strengths and challenges (including outlier practices across schools) which were valuable in generating conclusion regarding how certain practices might lead to different student and/or teacher outcomes.     

Visualizing Social Justice: Using Controversial Images in Social Studies Classrooms

In this article, we promote the use of controversial images to enhance the discussion of social justice issues in schools. Controversial images provide rich opportunities for students to question what is occurring currently in society as well as what has occurred in the past. We provide an example set of activities to be used in teacher education that can help future teachers explore engaging methods for teaching with controversial images, discuss tensions involved with the use of controversial images, and to develop connections between using controversial images and teaching for social justice.     

The Education of Students with Immigrant Background in Iceland: Parents’ and Teachers’ Voices

In recent years Icelandic schools have seen an increase in students with immigrant background. These changes require schools and teachers to respond to the educational needs these students may have. The aim of this article is to examine these changes by looking at the experience of teachers and parents of immigrant students regarding their education. As part of this qualitative research, 38 teachers were interviewed in focus groups with a view to the challenges and experiences of teaching immigrant students. Ten parents were also interviewed individually about their experiences of Icelandic schools and their children’s education. The findings revealed that teachers are unsupported in their quest for understanding and managing multicultural education and that the Icelandic school system challenges foreign parents’ understanding of school as a traditional place for learning. It is suggested that addressing the lack of collaboration and discussion between both parties on students’ needs and parents’ expectations could improve the education of immigrant students.     

The heart of school improvement: a multi-site case study of leadership for teacher learning in Vietnam

This study addressed the research question: How do Vietnamese principals lead the professional learning of teachers? The research was comprised of a multiple-site case study of leadership and teacher learning in four Vietnamese schools. Qualitative data analysis aimed at identifying modal practices adopted by these Vietnamese principals to lead teacher learning in their schools. The research identified four key leadership practices: moral purpose, collaboration, learning support, and motivational strategies. The findings support assertions for a broad set of globally-relevant school leadership practices as well as the need to adapt these to the cultural context of specific schools.     

A Critical Survey of 1000 Activities

Attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and classroom practices of teachers in 24 urban and suburban elementary schools throughout the United States were assessed with teacher questionnaires and classroom observations during a single school year. Teachers in schools serving students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds put greater emphasis on teacher authority and control and less on student autonomy and constructivist approaches than teachers in other schools did. Teachers in schools serving students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds also were less trusting of students and more skeptical about their abilities. Teachers’ beliefs were generally consistent with their practices, even when school poverty level and students’ mean achievement levels were statistically controlled.     

‘We learnt that last week’: reading into the language practices of teachers

The messages teachers convey to their students through their use of language can often go unconsidered, yet such practices can have a significant impact on students and their schooling, and in the creation of learning difficulties. In this paper we employ a discursive and ideological approach to analysing teachers’ language practices and suggest that such systematic examination is warranted given the centrality of ‘teacher talk’ to students’ schooling. We draw attention to these concerns through an analysis of a spoken text between a teacher and student in the context of ‘show and tell’; a dialogue drawn from a larger body of data of interviews with and observations of teachers in six Australian primary schools. The analysis attempts to uncover the meanings conveyed to the student in question, Sam, through his teacher’s language practices and to demonstrate the potentially detrimental effects of these practices on his schooling. Generally, we propose that teachers frequently employ linguistic techniques to refashion students in various ways, according to the norms of schooling; norms that often do not account very well for student difference and which position them as ‘difficult’. Specifically, we argue that Sam’s teacher seems more interested in moulding Sam’s behaviour to conform to the interests of the school than in valuing his heritage and contributions.     

Children and Place: Stories We Have, Stories We Need

Given existing curricula, instructional and assessment practices, teacher preparation programs, and multicultural education approaches, schools can be unhelpful places for students who are not at least middle class and politically white. Critical theory offers a range of conceptual frameworks for understanding and addressing these injustices but teachers find the ideas difficult to learn or to practice in classrooms. Increased attention to the use of stories is suggested to support individual and collective transformation and growth for teachers, students, and communities.