An Interrogation of the “If Only” Mentality: One Teacher’s Deficit Perspective put on Trial

In this article, I interrogate a previous and harmful “If Only” mindset I held as an early childhood literacy teacher. I describe the “If Only” mentality as the idea that if only the parents and families of the students I taught changed, schools and teachers could serve their children better. This deficit way of thinking led to a number of mistakes I made as a still-new, white, middle-class, monolingual Reading Recovery teacher who was unprepared to value the home and community literacies of a population of students and families from linguistic, cultural, and economic backgrounds other than my own.     

Why Compulsory Science Education Should <Emphasis Type="Italic">Not</Emphasis> Include Philosophy of Science

Like many readers of this journal, I have long been an advocate of having science students introduced to philosophy of science. In particular, influenced by the Philosophy for Children movement founded by Matthew Lipman, I have advocated such an introduction as early as possible and have championed early secondary school as an appropriate place. Further, mainstream science curricula in a number of countries have, for some time now, supported such introductions (albeit of a more limited sort) under the banner of introducing students to the “Nature of Science”. In this paper, I explore a case against such introductions, partly in role as “Devil’s Advocate” and partly exploring genuine qualms that have come to disturb me. Generally speaking, my judgement is that no justification is available in terms of benefit to the individual or to society of sufficient weight to outweigh the loss of freedom of choice involved in such forced learning. One possible exception is a minimalist and intellectually passive “Nature of Science” introduction to some uncontroversial philosophical views about science. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Seventh International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science and Science Teaching, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg and subsequently published in its proceedings (see my 2003). I am grateful to those who engaged in discussion of the paper upon its presentation. I am also grateful to the advice of this journal’s anonymous referees.     

“I think everybody is afraid of the unknown”: Early childhood teachers prepare for mainstreaming

Conclusion In conclusion, as early childhood teachers prepare to meet the “unknown” —mainstreaming—the early childhood community has an excellent opportunity to benefit from both past experiences and the research literature on mainstreaming and teacher change. This work suggests that teachers' feelings and attitudes about mainstreaming must be addressed in dynamic relation to their needs for information and skills as these change over time. Teachers, directors, and teacher educators need help in understanding that teachers' development and the development of the children they teach are inextricably linked. While these concepts have been explored previously, it is imperative that practitioners at all levels recognize their relevance at this critical juncture in the implementation of P.L. 99–457 and consider new and creative ways to translate them into practice. I feel... not just that I couldn't cope with it... but emotionally I don't think I could... Emotionally I think I would have a hard time, you know, going home and feeling good about myself when I know that there's this child [with disabilities in my classroom].     

Ready...Fire...Aim! Toward meaningful technology standards for educators and students

Conclusion I applaud ISTE, AASL, AECT, and the other organizations involved for tackling the “messy work” of developing standards for the use of technology and information resources in schools. And, at the same time, I call for a “second generation” of standards that define realistic expectations for teachers based on the subjects and levels they are called upon to teach. I propose that professional organizations from each subject work with ISTE and AECT to complete this huge task, and I propose that we consider as a “next step” the creation of a set of on-line learning experiences through which teachers can gain the identified skills and knowledge by using the very technologies we’re hoping they’ll embrace in their own teaching. There’s an old saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do.” As far as educational technologies are concerned, this is also true. For many, the goal seems to have been simply to “get more computers into the schools,” without much thought about purpose. To return to Phil Schlechty’s metaphor, It’s generally been a brief and misguided “Ready” stage (occupied with questions like “How many do we need?” “What type?” “Where?” and “How shall we connect them?”), followed by “Fire!” (the acquisition and installation of equipment). What we need is: “Ready” (the creation of appropriate teams of people who will combine their insights to plan for the district)... “Aim” (a series of discussions about what technologies can accomplish for schools and the students they serve)... “Fire” (acquisition, installation, and professional development according to plan)... “Aim” (an assessment of how well the technologies and related programs met the intended goals, and a new planning effort designed to close the gap)... “Fire” (acquisition and implementation designed to eliminate the gap)... “Aim” (another gap assessment)... “Fire” (another attempt to close gaps)..., And so on.     

Examining the social and scientific roles of invention in science education

I have been drawn to the construct of “invention” and “inventive acts” because in my research involving how homeless children construct science and the self-in-science, an overwhelming theme has been the multiple ways in which self-identity in science has been described by the children through a language of invention. Using post-modern feminism and science and technologies studies, I examine the multiple uses and definitions of “invention” in science in order to develop a theory of invention and inventive acts around the themes: invention as a social act, invention as a recursive and socially linked process, and embodied agency. I use this framework to examine the construct of “invention” in two different case studies involving the science education of urban homeless children. Finally, I link this discussion of invention and inventive acts with current international reform initiatives revolving around constructivist science teaching and learning.     

Models of supervision in early childhood programs: Implications for training

Many child care directors inherit their role of supervisor without having had adequate training or experience. Given the wide disparity in the field with respect to staff preparation, child care directors, in their role as supervisors, are called on to develop, train, evaluate, and appraise child care workers on a daily basis. The literature in the field suggests that there are common threads among supervisory models in early childhood and that directors of child care programs can benefit from in-service training that specifically addresses their supervisory functions. “The most difficult part of my job as Director is trying to get my staff to change certain practices.” Director, Church Preschool Program “I don't feel comfortable with my role as evaluator; I guess I don't like telling people they're doing something wrong.” Director, Day Care Center     

M��lama I Ka ����ina, Sustainability: learning from Hawai��i��s displaced place and culture-based science standard

This response to Mitchell and Mueller’s “A philosophical analysis of David Orr’s theory of ecological literacy” comments on their critique of Orr’s use of the phrase “ecological crisis” and what I perceive as their conflicting views of “crisis.” I present my views on ecological crisis informed by standpoint theory and the definition of crisis as turning point. I connect the concept of turning point to tipping point as used in ecology to describe potentially irreversible changes in coupled social-ecological systems. I suggest that sustainable societies may provide models of adaptive learning in which monitoring of ecological phenomena is coupled to human behavior to mitigate threats to sustainability before a crisis/tipping point is reached. Finally, I discuss the Hawai‘i State Department of Education’s removal of its Indigenous science content standard Mālama I Ka ‘Āina, Sustainability and its continued use in community-based projects.     

The Interpretation of Dreams: Ladson-Billings,Freud, and Derrida

This study provides a critical and close reading of The Dreamkeepers (1994), by Gloria Ladson-Billings. The paper focuses primarily on the gendered nature of “being a teacher” and “being a student” as revealed in the dreamkeeper text, while maintaining its engagement with race and culture as it is manifested in the United States context. It considers the remarkable double-voicedness of the dreamkeeper text through a Derridean understanding of dreams, memory, perception, and writing. The study concludes by inviting teachers and teacher educators to reflect upon their personal teaching images via continual engagement with the social codes that structure pedagogical relationships.     

Student Flow Between Community Colleges: Investigating Lateral Transfer

The traditional unidirectional (“linear”) postsecondary path from high school to a community college to a 4-year institution into the workforce represents accurately a decreasing proportion of the pathways actually taken by students through higher education. Instead, students increasingly exhibit patterns of enrollment that take them through multiple postsecondary institutions, both within levels of the higher education system (e.g., multiple community colleges, multiple 4-year institutions) and across levels (e.g., movement back and forth between community colleges and 4-year institutions). These “swirling” patterns of enrollment are widely recognized by scholars of higher education, but they remain poorly understood. In this study, I employ data that address 89,057 first-time students in the California community college system to answer a number of key questions concerning lateral transfer between community colleges, which, according to prior research, constitutes one sizeable component of student “swirl”. Building on the very limited work on this topic, I examine whether the reported high prevalence of lateral transfer holds true under a more stringent operational framework than that employed in prior work. I explore whether lateral transfer is primarily an artifact of students enrolling simultaneously in multiple community colleges, sometimes called “double-dipping”. I investigate the timing of lateral transfer from several different perspectives to determine how lateral transfer fits in students’ progress and development. Finally, I probe the relationship between students’ level of academic investment in their current community college and the risk of lateral transfer.     

Teachers explore knowledge management and E-learning as models for professional development

Conclusion It is interesting to report that the educators who took part in this look at KM and e-leaming have a great expectation of the development of online communities of learning. As one said in an e-mail message three days after the end of the course, “I just keep logging back on looking for interesting ideas and discussions with my extended family—I guess I’m addicted.” The model of resource gathering, resource sharing, collaboration and responsibility for learning which seems natural in an online course may be training the students to expect these same elements in professional development. Knowledge management and e-learning may provide additional conceptual models to build professional development to match these expectations. Special thanks to the students in ITED 7500 Instructional Technology Management, Spring Semester, 2000, whose contributions shaped this effort in ’the scholarship of teaching’.     

Compliment-Giving among filipino college students: An exploratory study

For this paper, a total of 270 Filipino compliments was collected from college students enrolled in six universities in Manila. Analysis gave results similar to those found by Herbert (1990) and Holmes (1994): use of syntactic patterns that seem formulaic in nature; tendency of female students to give more compliments; and tendency of both genders to compliment the females more than the males. Females ’ and males ’ inclination to employ Non-acceptance and Non-agreement responses at a high frequency may be a reflection of these students ’ adherence to the Filipinos ’ conservative culture and of their desire to establish and maintain solidarity with each other. Their employment of Acceptance responses on an almost equal frequency, on the other hand, seems to be a manifestation of their regard for the preservation of their interlocutors ’ “face” needs. Another point observed is the interaction between gender and compliment-giving in terms of frequency of use. Finally, while males seemed to be interested in maintaining solidarity, females tended to continue showing their power to communicate, as reflected in the number of compliments they uttered. I wish to thank the following for their being instrumental in the completion of this paper: CED-CRC of DLSU, Manila for funding this research; the student research assistants and their friends; some DLSU staff for their technical assistance; and my colleagues for their valuable input. I value my friends ’ comments, but the interpretations and mistakes in this paper remain my own.     

Towards a theory and practice of policy engagement: Higher education research policy in the making

Academic engagement with higher education research policy in Australia, and with education policy more generally, is in crisis. This time around, it is not just that our theoretical tools are blunt and irrelevant (Ball 1990), so are our politics. It seems our attention has been so consumed by “what is policy” (Ball 1994a) and with challenging its claims to authority, that we have missed or ignored imperatives to engage with its production. Even though some have attempted contributions, for the most part we have been “coerced into an era of cooperation”. Getting ourselves out of this mess will take more than just better theories and new politics. It will require a degree of cooperation, to advance a theory and practice of policy engagement and to re-establish a field of education that resists the tendency to fragment and/or the temptation to defend itself “against” policy. In this paper I attempt an assessment of where we are theoretically and politically with regard to education policy and where we need to look to find new forms of policy engagement. By way of illustration, I draw on examples from AARE (the Australian Association for Research in Education) and the Australian RQF (Research Quality Framework) although the analysis is by no means restricted to these.     

Legal implications of divorce and custody battles for day care administrators

The moment is tense ... and somewhat confusing. I am in my office with a small group of five-year-olds reading a story when Mrs. Wilson arrives. She is young, pretty, and looking very serious. “Billy says that his father visited here today!”     

Changes in students’ computer literacy

The CLAT provided considerable information about children’s attitudes and knowledge well beyond computer literacy. It revealed improvements in the use of language, as well as in spelling and penmanship. I understand very well that evaluation engineers would prefer to “partner with teachers” to ensure more thorough grant-funded documentation of the many and diverse process and product outcomes of computer technology expenditures (Baker, 1999). However, a simple count of computer-related terms listed by students appeared, for my limited purposes, to be both a valid and reliable indicator of at least one small aspect of computer literacy     

Can a self-efficacy-based intervention decrease burnout,increase engagement,and enhance performance? A quasi-experimental study

Using the Social Cognitive Theory as a theoretical framework, this study evaluated a 4-month, individual cognitive-behavioral intervention program to decrease burnout and increase self-efficacy, engagement, and performance among university students. The main objective of the intervention was to decrease the anxiety the students coped with before exams in order to increase their beliefs of self-efficacy. Besides the study group intervened, two control groups were involved (i.e., a “stressed” control group and a “healthy” control group). All 3 groups filled out a questionnaire before the intervention and then again 6 months later (2 months after the intervention was completed). The results show that self-efficacy, engagement and performance increased in the intervened group when compared to both control groups. Regarding burnout, decreases were noted in both the intervened and stressed control groups but not in the healthy control group. The implications of the study are discussed, together with its limitations and suggestions for future research.     

The missing voice of culturally relevant teachers in school restructuring

This article addresses the role of exemplary teachers of students of color in educational reform. Using an ethnographic study of two urban junior high schools in the beginning stages of restructuring, I describe threeculturally relevant teachers who create empowering educational experiences for low-achieving African American students. Despite their exemplary practice and their enthusiasm for educational change, thewisdom of practice of these teachers was largely discounted in the restructuring process. They were marginalized by ideological and political contexts which suppressed racial issues and advocacy for African American students and which supported a deficit model of low-achieving African American students. Restructuring fostered little examination of policies, practices, and beliefs which tended to marginalize African American students. This research suggests that professional dialogue and collaboration are mediated by teachers' ideologies and by relations of power in schools and communities. If exemplary teachers of children of color are to influence educational change, reformers need to legitimize their knowledge and sponsor their leadership. Also, reforms that benefit marginalized children of color may require the mobilization and participation of parents and communities of color as well as their teacher-advocates. Even though I'm not doing the Mentoring and Counseling Program any more, I can't reject them. They know I care about them. They know when you're not pretending. You don't turn off realness. Paulette I find them where they are. I say, “You've told stories. When you say, ‘The way I see it,’ that's point of view.” I just do it like that. When kids believe you think they can learn, they will. Samuel We have to challenge these students. When we don't give them an opportunity, we're taking something away from them. Helen     

Students' application of a biological concept: Factors affecting consistency

This study investigated factors affecting students' ability to apply consistently the concept of adaptations (i.e., characteristics which suit an organism to its environment). Individual interviews were carried out with 74 Year 10 students, of whom only 47% showed an understanding of the concept. These students were asked to indicate on a list of living and non-living items which ones whould have adaptations. It was found that they were more likely to apply the concept to vertebrates than to other types of living things. In addition, many students appeared to be unable to separate consistently the idea of “adaptations as characteristics” from the other everyday and scientific meanings of the terms “adapt” and “adaptation”.     

The Oppressor Within: A Counterstory of Race, Repression, and Teacher Reflection

In this paper, I offer my own counterstory of matriculating through a teacher education program as an African American student on a predominately White campus as a reference point for thinking through how racism operates through teacher education’s dominant discourse and practice of teacher reflection. It is an important story to tell primarily because it touches on a largely unexplored dimension of teacher reflection. While the large majority of the literature has focused on how to prepare White preservice teachers to teach in a culturally and racially complex world, little qualitative attention has been given to the preparation of nonwhite students. While there are a few select and important articles that touch on some of the challenges African American students face in predominately White teacher education programs, including covert and overt racism, none focus on how teacher reflection might reproduce these dynamics. Thus what the literature on teacher reflection often suggests is that it is a racially neutral practice. In this essay, however, I suggests otherwise, by providing an intimate and critical look at my process of learning to be a reflective practitioner. The question I seek to grapple with is quite simply, “What does teacher reflection work to repress?”     

Becoming a “Model Minority”: Acquisition,Construction and Enactment of American Identity for Korean Immigrant Students

While the “model minority” stereotype of Asian Americans and its negative effects has been documented elsewhere, relatively little attention has been paid to how recent Asian immigrant students begin to embrace the stereotype while in schools. This study explores the identity formation process for a group of recent Korean immigrant students as “model minority” in an urban high school to empirically document the process. Through interviews and observations, I learned that the immigrants acquired an unauthentic American identity as a racial minority, constructed their status as “model minority” in response, and enacted the stereotype as they sanctioned those who couldn’t live up to the stereotype. The aim is to add to the body of knowledge on the school experiences of recent Asian immigrants.