Learner identity and transition: an ethnographic exploration of undergraduate trajectories

This article considers ethnographic data collected during undergraduate students’ transition to higher education. Drawing on communities of practice theory, the research focuses on the psychological process of identity as a trajectory, considering how reconciliation and negotiation of identities across and between communities influence transition. We aimed to explore the ways in which incoming identity influences participation and higher education learner identity, consider the academic practices which construct the transition experience and analyse those practices in terms of learner identity and participation. The data sources included observations, informal social interactions, one-to-one interviews and document analysis. Data collection took place over the first term of an undergraduate course. A theoretical thematic analysis was undertaken investigating the ways in which identity shaped participation, the practices that influenced participation and how participation subsequently influenced learner identity. We argue that the reconciliation of past, present and future identities is psychologically challenging for students during educational transition and this influences individual trajectories. Some practices assumed an already autonomous learner rather than enabling development of autonomy. Inability to participate in valued (and often implicit) academic practice was seen to negatively influence learner identities, delaying full participation. The focus for transition research could therefore consider enabling systems and practices which acknowledge differences and fully support successful changes in learner identity.     

Personal,professional, political: an exploration of science teacher identity development for teaching climate change

Abstract

Climate change presents societal and environmental challenges, as well as educational ones. Obstacles abound within teaching and learning climate change, related to its complex nature, the proliferation of misinformation, and its absence from many science curricula. Efforts have previously been made to study teacher content knowledge and beliefs on climate change with varying results. This study employed identity as a theoretical framework to examine aspects of climate change teaching. This study followed a reflexively iterative process that enabled the construction of a conceptual model for identity development. This model demonstrates multifaceted influences including personal, professional, and political elements, and the dynamism these elements exhibit over time. This conceptual model is best described via five trends: Personal Valuation of Nature; Experiences in Science Teaching and Learning; Teacher Instructional Support and Agency; Epistemic Evidence-based Instruction; and Civic and Social Awareness via Socioscientific Literacy. The presence and strength of enactment of each trend led to the development of four possible constructions of identity: Passionate Environmentalist, Student Interest Engager, Content First Educator, and Civic and Epistemic Skills Promoter. Most frequently teachers exhibited combinations of identities and often created a unique amalgam of multiple dimensions of identities in action.     

Reflections on social justice, race, ethnicity and identity from an ethical perspective

In these reflections, I identify complexities in few constructs that are often used in educational research, although not often critically, namely, social justice, race, ethnicity and identity. This paper suggests a non-ontological and non-epistemological approach to ethics as developed by Emmanuel Levinas as a normative means to deal with some of the complexities. In dealing with the construct of social justice, an ethical approach calls for productive research tools to not only understand exclusion but also to change situations of injustice to marginalised groups. Further, both constructs race and ethnicity can be used to identify groups of people based on their history, culture and/or lifestyles. As social constructions they have different historical origins and are open to alternative connotations, uses and abuses. An ethical perspective is useful to manage the dilemma of essentialism that group identification may lead into. Finally, the debate around the usefulness of the construct of identity raises some ethical questions about the role of research and the lived experience of its subjects. An ethical stance demands that constructs of analysis in social inquiry should not only demonstrate their utility for knowledge generation but also should demonstrate a responsibility for the construction and reconstruction of lifeworld in which academic endeavours are conducted.     

经济社会发展背景下统计服务意识的培养及实践探究

随着产业结构的不断优化,市场竞争越发激烈,其中第三产业服务行业的重要性逐渐凸显出来,服务不但是第三产业服务性行业经营发展的核心内容,也是在市场竞争中企业生存下来的关键所在。良好的服务质量不是一朝一夕就能形成的,它需要先进的服务理念。所以,提升企业在市场中的竞争能力,使企业更好更快发展,最根本的手段就是提高服务质量。     

Shaping the self through education: exploring the links between educational identity statuses,appraisals of control and value,and achievement emotions

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Educational identity is a central domain of development for emerging adults enrolled in higher education. The purpose of this study was to explore the...     

谈谈知识、能力培育与价值观培育的紧密结合

前不久举行的全国加强和改进大学生思想政治教育工作座谈会,强调坚持八个"紧密结合",其中第一个结合是"知识、能力的培育与价值观的培育紧密结合".正确理解和领会其精神实质,对于把握和实现"培养什么人、怎样培养人"这一战略任务,提高大学生思想政治教育工作科学化水平,具有重要的现实指导意义.     

Regional Boards of Education: mediating links betweens social investment and social consumption

This article examines the data gathered during research into the formation of a regional board of education in Victoria, Australia. Two of the issues which arose over the 12‐month research period and which were extensively commented on during the second round of interviews are explored. The first issue relates to the frustration experienced by, especially, the elected representatives who had joined under the banner of collaborative and participatory decision making, but found in reality that this was not the case. The consequent high degree of alienation led many members to resign. The second issue relates to the tension between the central administration and the members representing the local community who sought to contest the limitations imposed on them by the central administration's budgetary guidelines. These issues are discussed within the theoretical perspectives offered by O'Connor, Offe and Habermas.     

A mixed methods exploration of the relationships between the racial identity,science identity,science self-efficacy,and science achievement of African American students at HBCUs

Utilizing a Critical Race Mixed Methodology framework, the purpose of this concurrent (QUANT +qual) mixed methods study was to investigate the relationships between the racial identity, science identity, science self-efficacy beliefs, and science achievement of 347 African American college students who attend historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The quantitative data identified several statistically significant relationships between science identity, racial identity, science self-efficacy, and science achievement. The results of a path analysis suggested that college science achievement is significantly explained by science identity (indirect effect = 0.09, p < 0.01), and marginally by racial identity measures (centrality, nationalist, and public regard), with science self-efficacy serving as a mediator. In the qualitative strand, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 students from the quantitative strand in order to corroborate the findings between the two methods. The qualitative data revealed that HBCUs facilitate the development of the constructs of interest by establishing Black racial cohesion and Black science cohesion, as well as by building students’ science cultural capital. Overall the qualitative findings corroborated several key quantitative findings.     

Peer group cultures and social identity: an integrated approach to understanding masculinities1

Sociological research investigating boys' masculinity performances has commonly recognised the importance of peer group cultures in identity construction. Whilst such work has undoubtedly offered important and useful frameworks for interpreting and understanding boys' behaviour in schools, the article argues that social psychological theories of intergroup relations also proffer important insights. Drawing upon interview and survey data, the article focuses on the existence of intergroup bias between peer groups in two secondary schools and demonstrates how a social identity framework can assist in providing a fuller and more complex understanding of boys' masculinities than sociological insights alone. Furthermore, it is suggested that gender work strategies designed to address and ultimately help some boys restructure their constructions of masculinity, which recognise the range of complex sociological and social psychological processes at work, are likely to more effective than those that offer partial insights. As such, strategies that draw upon work on masculinities and upon social psychological theories of intergroup relations may be particularly effective.     

Feedback as dialogue: exploring the links between formative assessment and social software in distance learning

The paper explores the relationship between formative assessment and social software. Formative assessment practices though beneficial for student learning become marginalised and constrained in open and distance learning environments in higher education. Feedback is a key factor in formative assessment and learners can benefit from the deployment of emerging technologies and the opportunities for participation and dialogue afforded by social software. This paper explores and proposes a conceptual framework for this relationship. The claim is that the social dimensions of emerging technologies – specifically, blogs and wikis – allow for formative assessment practices to be re‐invented or at the very least facilitated by essentially participative and student‐focussed interventions. A comparison of these technologies against formative assessment mechanisms identifies the types of processes that these new tools might best support to encourage effective feedback approaches that both empower the learner and enhance their learning experience.     

Childhood social anxiety and social support-seeking: distinctive links with perceived support from teachers

Social support-seeking is recognised as an important strategy used by children to cope with negative emotions. However, there are important gaps in our knowledge about children’s perceptions of different sources of social support, and the associations that these perceptions have with individual differences in socio-emotional functioning. The present study focused on elucidating the links between social support-seeking and social anxiety in children, with particular attention to support from teachers. One hundred and eight 11- to 12-year-olds completed measures of social anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as a questionnaire measuring social support-seeking processes for coping with a generic friendship problem. Preliminary analyses showed that teachers were less likely to be approached for social support than parents and peers, and were viewed as least available and least effective. However, social anxiety—independently of depressive symptoms and gender—was positively associated with a greater self-reported likelihood of approaching teachers for support. Moreover, this effect was partially mediated by the perceived effectiveness of emotion-focused support from teachers. These results point to theoretical and practical implications regarding the salience of social support in school for children with higher levels of social anxiety.     

Conceptualizing identity,learning and social justice in community-based learning

This paper explores the process of learning to become a social justice teacher, drawing in particular on Bakhtin’s notions of dialogue in order to theorize pre-service teachers’ identity negotiations. Interpretations of learning and identity are based on the content of pre-service teachers’ narratives about community-based learning. Supported by theoretically-sensitive ways of conceptualizing identity and social justice, the author develops an understanding of the ways pre-service teachers shape their identities through participating in community events. Implications for teacher education, in terms of the design and pedagogic practices, are presented with the intent of enabling the realization of social justice teacher education.     

Assessing the links between punitive parenting,peer deviance,social isolation and bullying perpetration and victimization in South Korean adolescents

Children who are abused at home are at an increased risk of bullying perpetration and bullying victimization. Within that context, the purpose of the present study was to test Agnew’s general strain theory and the peer deviancy training hypothesis by utilizing structural equation modeling to empirically examine pathways linking punitive parenting to bullying perpetration and bullying victimization. This study adds to the literature in two important ways. First, potential mediating linkages between punitive parenting and bullying perpetration and bullying victimization were examined, including socially withdrawn behavior and deviant peer affiliation. Second, these relationships were considered in a longitudinal sample of South Korean adolescents, which is a novel examination given that parenting in South Korea is guided largely by Confucianism which reinforces parental control, restrictiveness, and a punitive nature. Results indicate that: (1) punitive parenting is directly related to bullying perpetration but not bullying victimization; (2) punitive parenting was found to have indirect effects only on bullying perpetration; (3) deviant peer affiliation increased the likelihood of bullying perpetration and victimization; and (4) socially withdrawn behavior only affected bullying perpetration via its effect on deviant peer affiliation.     

Performance,structure and ideal identity: Reconceptualising teachers' engagement in online social spaces

In recent years, teachers have turned to online social spaces for peer‐to‐peer interaction in increasing numbers. This online engagement has been highlighted by both practitioners and academics as having important implications for teachers' professional learning and development. However, there is a need to move beyond instrumental discourses that simply discuss engagement and technology in terms of costs and benefits, and analyse the complex social contexts in which engagement takes place. Therefore, presenting data from a digital ethnography of three online social spaces used by teachers, this paper uses professional identity as an analytical framework in order to understand teachers' online engagement in holistic terms in a way that acknowledges the messy social realities in which teachers work. It then presents a new theoretical framework for conceptualising teachers' professional identity that develops the concept of embedded ideal identity and takes into account context, social complexity, structure and agency.