Where the two shall meet: Exploring the relationship between teacher professional culture and student learning culture

This study focuses on the understudied connection between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of school culture. Utilizing a longitudinal sample of approximately 130,000 students and 9000 teachers in 225 New York City traditional public schools, we investigate how professional culture among teachers intersects with students’ collective emotional engagement—that is, the extent students together view the school environment as trusting and respectful, both between teachers and students and among students (i.e., student learning culture). We find that when the teachers report a strong collaborative culture, believe they have adequate materials, and feel physically safe, students report a stronger and more positive learning culture. Our results thus fill a gap in prior research on school change that has looked at either teacher or student perceptions of school culture but not the two together. Here, because our results demonstrate such a positive relationship between the collective views of teachers and the collective views of students regarding the environment in which these groups work, they suggest new avenues for research to examine how such subcultures within a school may, together, act as critical and interdependent levers for school change.     

Children participating as researchers in primary schools: what’s in it for the teachers?

Whilst within universities, research on rather than with children/pupils is a well-established methodology, this paper reports on teachers’ responses to a schools and university-based partnership project, ‘Pupils as Research Partners in Primary (PARPP), which works to co-create pupil-led research opportunities for pupils in research projects informed by pupils’ experiences in primary schools. A previous paper, French and Hobbs, [(2017). “‘So How Well Did It Really Go’? Working with Primary School Pupils as Project Evaluators: A Case Study.” TEAN Journal 9 (1): 56–65] reported on how one PARPP project had a beneficial effect on pupils and their school environment. For this paper the project team interviewed a number of teachers whose pupils in the partner schools were involved in the pilot study phase of the project. Specifically, the teachers were interviewed to ascertain if the involvement of pupils, as lead researchers in projects exploring various aspects of the school environment, had impacted on their perceptions of pupil-led research. Findings suggest that the experiences of teachers in schools where PARPP projects had taken place had led them to re-evaluate the practicality and desirability of encouraging pupils to actively to research their school environments.     

Knowledge acquisition in Biochemistry,Physiology and Anatomy within the context of problem-based learning

Abstract

The study sought to examine the current Zimbabwean school system; establish the extent to which it is conducive to students making decisions about the selection of subjects they learn at school; to examine the nature of children's rights and the extent to which these rights are practiced in schools and in the prevailing socio-economic and political milieu. A stratified random sample of 100 pupils, 24 teachers and five school heads was used in this study. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire, an interview schedule and observing both pupils and teachers. The study found that teachers and pupils seemed to be aware of pupils’ rights to participate in deciding the subjects they studied; and most teachers and school heads felt it was more of their duty to decide for pupils because of their immaturity. Therefore, determining the school curriculum content should involve school heads, teachers and pupils instead of choices being made and the content dictated to pupils.     

Pupil guidance: An integral part of teacher education and development in Scotland?

Many schools throughout the UK are experiencing challenging behaviour from pupils and high levels of absence and exclusion as they seek to implement initiatives aimed at raising pupil attainment [National Audit Office (2005). Improving school attendance, London: The Stationery Office]. These initiatives often presuppose that pupils will receive adequate levels of guidance and support to help them make curricular, personal, social, and health decisions. However, little is heard from teachers and students undertaking initial teacher education courses on how they have been prepared for this extended role of supporting increasing diverse student populations; nor do we know how they define guidance/pupil support and integrate this with their concept of the professional role of a teacher. This article presents evidence from a one-year study of pupil support in Scotland commissioned by the Scottish Executive Education Department. The study provided evidence for The National Review of Guidance Provision in Scotland [Scottish Executive (2003). The national review of guidance. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive; Scottish Executive (2005). Happy, safe and achieving their potential. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive]. The study explored the views of all 32 local authorities in Scotland, a sample of students in training in two universities and teachers, headteachers and pupils in eight case study schools, and also a sample of their parents. This article focuses specifically on the findings relating to teachers and students in training. It identifies the ways in which they support pupils and how well they think they have been prepared for that task. Two dominant models of pupil support emerge from these data: an embedded and a specialist approach, and these vary according to school and education sector. Primary school teachers were more likely to embed pupil support into their concept of being teachers, whereas secondary teachers perceived it to be a separate, specialist function, which many were reluctant to undertake. Some implications for teacher education are highlighted.     

中高年级小学生闲暇时间管理策略

小学生闲暇时间的管理有利于促进人的个性化和实现人的全面发展。提升小学生闲暇时间管理的策略为:在社会层面,将闲暇教育列入国家和学校教育的议程,动员社会力量开发闲暇活动可利用的资源;在学生层面,树立正确的观念,重视闲暇时间的管理,学习科学方法,合理管理闲暇时间;在学校层面,培育闲暇时间管理意识和技能兼具的教师队伍,开发建立闲暇时间管理的课程体系,落实闲暇活动设施与场所的多样性与开放性;在家庭层面,发挥父母为第一任教师的启蒙作用,坚持整体性原则,形成家庭、学校、社会教育的合力。     

‘Take more time to actually listen’: students' reflections on participation and negotiation in school

Behaviour in schools is an emotive topic and one of enduring political interest and sensitivity. The media often portrays schools as violent and dangerous places and young people as ever more unruly. This paper explores findings from a recent large‐scale national study on behaviour and focuses on the data from primary and secondary school students within this study. The comments and suggestions offered by students move beyond a discussion of behaviour to focus on the broader questions of participation, engagement and meanings of active citizenship in school.     

Exploring primary pupils’ experiences and understandings of ‘e-safety’

This paper examines the experiences and understandings of primary (K6) school pupils with regards to managing issues of risk and safety during their everyday use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The paper is based on survey and interview data with pupils aged 7 to 11 years old in five English primary schools (n = 612). Analysis of these data shows that whilst most pupils recognised a general need to be mindful of ICT-related risks and dangers, their actual experiences of risk tended to be described in terms of operational problems encountered when using ICTs. Conversely, pupils’ understandings of potential risk were often based upon exaggerated fears deriving from a number of moral panics relating to child safety. These data suggest that official notions of ‘e-safety’ remain abstract and poorly understood concepts for many children. In considering what implications these data have for the ongoing ‘e-safety’ agenda in UK schools the paper concludes by suggesting three possible areas of change: (1) re-orientating the topic and tone of the official discourses surrounding e-safety; (2) increasing pedagogical interventions in primary schools aiming at enhancing pupils’ critical literacy skills; and (3) establishing a meaningful and sustained dialogue between pupils, teachers and parents about safety and risk when using ICTs.     

Bullying and School Liability—Implications for School Personnel

Bullying is a serious and escalating problem in public schools across America. Each day, thousands of students face taunts and humiliation stemming from bullies. Bullying victims experience emotional and psychological problems that may persist for a lifetime. Other victims commit suicide or retaliate against bullies out of fear for their own safety. Because the courts presume that schools are safe places, teachers and administrators have a leading responsibility to protect students from the harmful behavior exhibited by bullies. They are expected to foresee that bullying is a harmful activity and initiate appropriate steps to eliminate it.

This article discusses the magnitude of the problem of bullying in public schools and the threat of liability for school personnel who fail to respond to bullying incidents. It concludes with a set of guides that should assist teachers and administrators in protecting students from foreseeable harm while minimizing their legal exposure to law suits based on negligence.     

Lower secondary school teachers' judgements of pupils' problems

Lower secondary school teachers from six different schools in one Norwegian municipality reported on the prevalence of problems among pupils entering lower secondary school and types of problems among pupils in Grades 8–10. Teachers report that the transition from Elementary to Lower secondary school is problematic for approximately 30% of the pupils. About 70% of the teachers report that 25% or more of pupils transitioning to Grade 8 lack academic experiences and skills and have problems following directions. There is also a tendency for teachers who report higher values on professional (un)certainty about pupils' learning and on two efficacy variables included in the study, to be more favourably inclined towards inclusion of children who are perceived as having learning or behaviour problems. Additionally, teachers who report higher values on efficacy scales tend to report lower values on problems among pupils, and teachers who are less favourable towards inclusion report higher numbers of pupils having problems. The results are discussed in relation to schools as workplaces and professional development for pre‐service and in‐service teachers.     

Heterogeneous Effects of Charter Schools: Unpacking Family Selection and Achievement Growth in Los Angeles

Disparate findings on whether students attending charter schools outperform peers in traditional public schools (TPS) may stem from mixing differing types of charters or inadequately accounting for pupil background. To gauge prior family selection and heterogeneous effects, we distinguish between conversion and start-up charter schools, along with a third site-run model operating in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). We find that TPS campuses converting to charter status (conversions) attracted more experienced and consistently credentialed teachers, and served relatively advantaged families, compared with newly created charter schools (start-ups), after tracking 66,000 students over 4 years, 2007–2011. Charters overall attracted pupils achieving at higher levels as they began a grade cycle (at baseline), relative to TPS peers, most pronounced among conversions that remained affiliated with the district. After matching students on their propensities to enter a charter school, we find that pupils attending charters outperformed TPS peers over the 4-year period. These benefits are most consistent and moderate in magnitude for middle school students. We observed significant though small effects in English language arts for pupils attending charter high schools. Latino students, mostly attending start-ups, enjoyed consistent benefits from attending a charter school.     

Fy ardal/my neighbourhood: How might pupils’ orientations to their neighbourhood contribute to a pedagogy of place?

The purpose of this study is to explore curricular and young people’s orientations to, and representations of, the areas in which they live contrasted against curricular representations of place in Wales. This is accomplished through a mixed methods approach incorporating statistical and content analysis. Responses were coded with a positive, neutral or negative value and organised into categories emerging from the data. While the majority (64.6%) of our participants are positively oriented to these areas, schools providing free school meals above the national average for Wales had more pupils with negative orientations. Additionally, the rhetoric in teachers’ guidance for the Curriculum Cymreig promotes cultural icons and symbols representing place, while pupils’ responses do not. The findings suggest a potential relationship between social disadvantage and negative orientations to place, as well as a dissonance between ‘official’ representations of Wales and pupils’ lived experiences. Recommendations are made to include place-based, dialectical critiques of curricular and pupils’ understanding of place within pedagogical practices of teachers in Wales.     

The stretchiness of learning the digital mystery of learning in one-to-one environments in schools

The aim of the study is to generate knowledge of how teachers change their teaching and how pupils change their learning as a consequence of working in One-to-One environments in schools. The result shows that teachers and students are changing their relation to teaching and learning when school is digitized. The most important dimension of this change is that content related knowledge of the digitized learning in a one-to-one school, is a prerequisite for improved quality and better results in schools where digital artefacts are used. The results also show in what ways teachers must understand that knowledge is stretched between analogue and digital teaching and learning in the classroom.     

The relevance of media education in primary schools in Hong Kong in the age of new media: a case study

In this age of new media, children are exposed to media messages at an early age. What can we do when the mass media exert such a great influence on children? One proposal has been for the introduction of a new school subject: media education. Though media education has not been part of the official curriculum in Hong Kong, some schools, both primary and secondary, have tried it out. This paper argues for the desirability of introducing media education in primary schools in Hong Kong, with regard to social change, recent education reform and learning initiatives of primary pupils. It then draws on the findings of a study conducted in a local primary school to examine the views of pupils, parents, and teachers on the effects on pupils of the implementation of media education lessons and campus radio projects in this age of new media.     

Teachers’ perceptions of disruptive behaviour in schools: a psychological perspective

This article reports on an investigation into school teachers’ perceptions of disruptive behaviour from a psychological perspective. The inter-disciplinary nature of this research bridges the understanding between educational and psychological perspectives on disruptive behaviour. This article discusses evidence that for the most troubled pupils, effective behaviour management at school necessitates a more nurturing and collaborative approach alongside current disciplinary policy. Two studies are reported which examine teachers’ perceptions of disruptive behaviour at school. Discussion focuses on findings of a postal questionnaire sent to 426 primary and secondary schools across England, regarding teachers’ perceptions on the extent to which pupils can control their disruptive behaviour. A further 122 primary schools were sent the questionnaire via SurveyMonkey. The findings illustrate that there is variation in how teachers in primary and secondary schools regard their pupils’ behaviour. Implications of the findings are discussed with reference to attachment theory.     

家庭环境是怎样影响小学生学习表现的——基于对新教育实验“家校合作共育”行动效果的调查

通过构建家庭环境影响小学生学习表现的基本机制并运用结构方程模型、多元线性回归分析等方法对770名参与新教育实验“家校合作共育”行动和726名未参与这一行动的小学生进行配对抽样并分析,结果发现:家庭环境通过学生学习投入、学校环境等中介变量对小学生学习表现产生显著作用,学校环境能够直接对小学生的学习投入和学习表现产生显著的正向作用,家校合作共育能够显著改善小学生学习表现。新教育实验学校学生的家庭藏书量显著高于非新教育实验学校的学生,新教育实验学校学生在阅读表现和数学表现上存在显著优势。学校参与新教育实验“家校合作共育”行动的时间越长,其学生的阅读表现和数学表现明显更好。为强化家庭环境对小学生学习表现的积极影响,在兼顾学生性别、年龄以及学校所在地区等因素的同时,可通过打造家庭书屋、创建书香校园、推进每月一事、优化家校合作等方式强化家庭环境对小学生学习表现的积极影响。     

Students’ Perceptions of Code-Switching in Natural Sciences Classrooms: A South African Perspective

Although South Africa is a multilingual country with 11 official languages, English dominates as the language of teaching and instruction in almost all schools. In addition to this, the Natural Sciences teachers at the school of study were cautioned not to use code-switching because the school policy states that the medium of instruction should be exclusively English. Recently, students at this school complained about teachers who had been code-switching between one or more indigenous languages and English. The objectives of this investigation, therefore, were to explore the perceptions of Grade 8 students regarding code-switching in Natural Sciences classrooms, their perceptions of the effect of code-switching on their academic achievement and also how the use of this teaching strategy influenced their respect for their teacher. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and the findings revealed that students believed that the use of code-switching confused many students, resulting in underachievement in Natural Sciences and that they respected teachers more when they taught in English only.     

Safe Schools for LGBTQI Students: How Do Teachers View Their Role in Promoting Safe Schools?

This literature review presents insights from existing research on how teachers view their role in creating safe schools for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and intersex (LGBTQI) students. Analysis of the literature shows that there are concerns for LGBTQI students’ safety in schools, that educational settings operate from a position of heteronormativity, and that heterosexual teachers are uniquely positioned as part of the dominant group in which they help to define what is normal and what is deviant in school culture. Research findings on the ways heterosexual teachers respond to institutional heteronormativity are summarized and compared. This review of research provides considerations for and recommendations to school administrators and teacher educators to address needs of teachers. Areas for future research also are identified.     

Beyond stereotypes? Talking about gender in school booktalk

The Swedish educational system states that work in schools should depict and mediate equality. One way of achieving this is through fiction, which according to the syllabus provides students with knowledge about the living conditions of women and men during different epochs and places. The present paper examines gender in a Swedish school, analysing ‘book club’ discussions, using a discursive approach. The data consist of video-recorded teacher-led booktalk sessions, involving small groups of pupils in grades 4–7. It was found that the teachers and/or the pupils invoked gender issues in all book club sessions. The fictive events were, at times, discussed in gender-stereotyped ways. Yet, the teachers and pupils also transcended gender stereotypes in several cases. In many of those cases, there was a generational pattern, in that the participants tended to apply less stereotyped thinking when talking about fictive characters of their own age.     

Education of Teachers in the Field of Teaching Natural Science Is Lagging behind the Requirements of the Inclusion of Pupils with Special Needs

ABSTRACT

In this theoretical study, we combined two approaches regarding the education of teachers in the field of teaching pupils with special needs with focus on teaching natural science topics, in Slovenia and in the Part of Northern Cyprus, respectively. We analysed syllabuses for different study programmes for teachers in primary schools in selected faculties in Slovenia. We focused on the specific content in those subjects, which are developing competences of students to be able to teach natural science topics, in particular physics topics, in primary schools in the adequate way, so the pupils with special needs can achieve the same goals as the other pupils. In addition, we included some accents regarding the children with special needs from approach to this topic at Near East University. We find out that the integrated content in the study programmes for the requirements of the inclusion of pupils with special needs in primary school is not sufficient or the inclusion in primary schools is planned too broad, if we take into account the current state of knowledge of the students in this specific field.     

Sometimes less is more: educational effectiveness of English as a foreign language instruction in German classrooms

This article challenges one of the central orthodoxies of much school effectiveness and school improvement work – namely that schools should strive to become more consistent environments for pupils and teachers. It reviews the arguments for consistency; the success of centralised systems, and the 'mirroring' of factors of effectiveness at the different levels of organisation but also examines the evidence which seems inconsistent with this thesis. For example, the differential performance of boys and girls in some schools and of certain ethnic groups in some school environments. Whilst not suggesting that 'consistency' theories should be rejected in all circumstances the article argues that the motivation of students is the key factor which needs to link school organisation and school context. Drawing on organisational literature the analysis concludes that effective schools are most likely to be those which are able to differentiate their structures, strategies and policies for different groups of pupils and different learning tasks.