Individuals and Leadership in an Australian Secondary Science Department: A Qualitative Study

In this article, we consider the complex and dynamic inter-relationships between individual science teachers, the social space of their work and their dispositions towards teacher leadership. Research into the representation of school science departments through individual science teachers is scarce. We explore the representations of four individual teachers to the assertions of teacher leadership proposed by Silva et al. (Teach Coll Rec, 102(4):779–804, 2000). These representations, expressed during regular science department meetings, occur in the social space of Bourdieu’s “field” and are a reflection of the “game” of science education being played within the department. This departmentally centred space suggests an important implication when considering the relationship between subject departments and their schools. The development of an individual’s representation of teacher leadership and the wider “field” of science education appears to shape the individual towards promoting their own sense of identity as a teacher of science, rather than as a teacher within a school. Our work suggests that for these individuals, the important “game” is science education, not school improvement. Consequently, the subject department may be a missing link between efforts to improve schools and current organizational practices.     

UN/DOING GENDER? A CASE STUDY OF SCHOOL POLICY AND PRACTICE IN ZAMBIA

This article explores an attempt to disrupt gender inequality in a unique, low-cost private school in Ndola, Zambia. It examines deliberate school policies aimed at “undoing gender” or fostering greater gender equity. These include efforts to maintain gender parity at all levels of the school and the requirement that both young men and women carry out cleaning tasks generally viewed as “women’s work”. Observations, interviews, student diaries and surveys from this school and from government schools provide the basis for a comparison, indicating how the former strives to interrupt the transmission of gender inequalities as well as how students respond to these practices. The findings suggest that the pedagogical practices deployed by this school have generally succeeded in destabilising norms of gender subordination and gender-based violence, though the replicability of these practices is interrogated given broader questions about the country’s public resources and political will.     

“I am smart and I am not joking”: Aiming high in the middle years of schooling

In this paper, we draw on accounts from students to inform a Middle Schooling movement that has been variously described as “arrested”, “unfinished” and “exhausted”. We propose that if the Middle Schooling movement is to understand the changing worlds of students and develop new approaches in the middle years of schooling, then it is important to draw on the insights that individual students can provide by conducting research with “students-as-informants”. The early adolescent informants to this paper report high hopes for their futures (despite their lower socioeconomic surroundings), which reinforces the importance of supporting successful learner identities and highlights the role of schooling in the decline of adolescent student aspirations. However, their insights did not stop at the individual learner, with students also identifying cultural and structural constraints to reform. As such, we argue that students may be both an important resource for inquiry into individual school reform and for the Middle Schooling movement internationally.     

Examining Gifted Students Who Are Economically At-Risk to Determine Factors that Influence Their Early Reading Success

The aim of this study was to determine whether the Frequency with which parents read to their children, Preschool Exposure and the initial Age that students “who are economically at-risk” were first exposed to significant literacy activities at home or in a preschool setting affected their reading grades. Students “who are economically at-risk,” for the scope of this study, are those students whose family incomes qualify them to receive either free or reduced lunches. The criteria set forth by the United States Department of Agriculture’s School Lunch Program and Child Nutrition Web site (United States Department of Agriculture, 2005) was used to determine whether families were qualified to receive reductions in the price of their school meals. Parents of students from six southeast Alabama schools were selected to participate in the study. All six schools administered the Questioning, Understanding, Enriching, Seeking and Thinking (QUEST) program for gifted or academically successful students. The subjects were 84 parents/families with public school children who are economically at-risk and participated in the QUEST program. Data were gathered using a questionnaire developed by the researcher. Instructional implications for this research study are to (1) improve reading instruction for economically at-risk students within our nation’s elementary schools; (2) equip parents with teaching tools and theories for providing critical pre-reading skills to their young children and (3) to provide sound research for teacher educators to base their instruction to preservice teachers preparing to teach students who are economically at-risk.     

Reading,metacognition and motivation: A follow-up study of German students in Grades 7 and 8

This follow-up study to van Kraayenoord and Schneider (1999) examined the performance in reading, metacognition and motivation related to reading of students in Grades 7 and 8. Results showed significant correlations between all of the variables. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that “good” and “poor” readers differed in reading self-concept and metacognitive measures related to reading and memory. A stepwise regression analysis suggested that the metacognitive variables were the best predictors of reading. Furthermore, a comparison of the results of the previous study with those of the current investigation revealed that the findings were stable over time. Since the period between the two studies is the time during which students make important decisions related to enrolment in one of three distinct school-types in Germany, we examined the results of various groups of students: those in “Gymnasium” (high educational track), “Realschule” (middle educational track), and “Hauptschule” (low educational track). Students in the Gymnasium scored significantly better than students in the other two groups on almost all variables related to reading. A re-analysis of the data from our first investigation found that the results of the Gymnasium students in the second study could be predicted from their results obtained during elementary school.     

Lexical decision and oral reading by poor and normal readers

The primary goal of this study was to compare a paper-and-pencil version of the lexical decision task, which can be administered groupwise, with reading aloud a differently ordered list of the same words and pseudowords. Participants were first and second graders (“normal readers”) and students from schools for children with learning difficulties. On the average, the latter “poor readers” scored at the same oral reading level as the normal readers, but were older. The correlation between both tasks appeared to be high and both tasks had comparable correlations with third variables, suggesting that performance is determined by the same processes. Because the lexical decision task showed little evidence for guessing, it may be an — even better — alternative for oral reading. No differences between participant groups were found that point to different reading strategies. Error analysis, however, indicates that the poor readers probably have a specific problem in the oral reading of pseudowords.     

L’éCOLE PUBLIQUE AU SéNéGAL : APPROCHE PSYCHOSOCIALE DES PRATIQUES PARENTALES DE (NON) SCOLARISATION ET DES EXPéRIENCES éDUCATIVES DES ENFANTS

PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN SENEGAL: ANALYSING THE REASONS FOR (NON) ENROLMENT – This study focuses on Senegal, where the education system is split between traditional Koranic schools and purportedly “modern” public schools, which have been compulsory since 1990 but which are currently attended by only two-thirds of children eligible to enrol. The article argues that a number of psychosocial factors need to be studied in order to understand this issue fully. By analysing responses gathered from 20 parent-child units, the authors reveal: (a) how parental identity strategies affect how they choose to school their children, and (b) how children’s attitudes are shaped in different ways depending on whether they attend “traditional” or “modern” schools.     

What kind of modern school system do we need?

The marketization of education cannot serve as the guiding principle in constructing the modern school system, nor can it be directly transplanted from modern enterprise system. Because the modern school system is a kind of “educational institution” rather than an “economical institution”, what it should focus on is not the ownership of property or the distinction of property, but on the core educational issue, that is, the students’ development. Such a kind of modern school system requires that the government delegates power to schools to realize academic autonomy in schools (selfgovernance). Translated from Jiaoyu Yanjiu 教育研究 (Educational Research), 2004, (12): 32–38     

The Impact of Sustained, Standards-Based Professional Learning on Second and Third Grade Teachers’ Content and Pedagogical Knowledge in Integrated Mathematics

This 3 year longitudinal study reports the feasibility of an Improving Teacher Quality: No Child Left Behind project for impacting teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge in mathematics in nine Title I elementary schools in the southeastern United States. Data were collected for 3 years to determine the impact of standards and research-based teacher training on these aspects of teacher quality. Content knowledge for the scope of this research study refers to the knowledge that teachers have about subject matter. Teacher quality is directly related to teachers’ “highly qualified” status, as defined by the No Child Left Behind mandate. According to this mandate, every classroom should have a teacher qualified to teach in his subject area and be able to “raise the percentage of students who are proficient in reading and math, and in narrowing the test-score gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students.” Participants were six second grade and seven third grade teachers of mathematics from nine schools within one failing school district. The implementation of standards-based methods in the nine Title I Schools increased teacher quality in elementary school mathematics. In fact, qualitative and quantitative data revealed significant gains in teachers’ mathematics content and pedagogical knowledge at both grade levels.     

The struggle for general science in Australia: The final campaign in the technical schools of the state of Victoria

The aims of the junior technical schools in Victoria were, from the time of their formal establishment in 1911, to provide preparatory education-training for two groups. First, for the relatively small number who proceeded to higher technical education, appropriate for industrial chemists, engineers and architects, and secondly, for the relatively larger numbers who sought to enter skilled trades. The first successful campaign in Australia for a general science for all other secondary students in Victoria was waged in the War years 1939–43 on a platform of science as “a badge of utility and a key to good citizenship”. These were the modest terms upon which science teaching secured a more central place in the classical literary curriculum. The final campaign twenty years later in technical schools was fought on the platform that school science was “not just a servant to trade or engineering courses.”     

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.     

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.     

“New Basic Education” and me

Initiated in September 1994, “New Basic Education” first underwent a five-year Exploratory Research phase from September 1994 to May 1999, which was followed by a second five-year Developmental Research phase from September 1999 to May 2004. Thus during the past ten years, “New Basic Education” has undergone a complete research process, including the presentation of the problem, the formation of results, and finally the dissemination, application, perfection, and development of its research. This study has preliminarily explored the transformation of schools, educational theories and educational research methods in China. The author hopes to respond actively to educational changes caused by our transforming society through her professional research. She presents in this paper the retrospective notes of her subjective state, such as her thought process, planning, actions and experiences while conducting and developing “New Basic Education” research. “New Basic Education” research originated from ten years of theoretical preparation (amassing basic educational theory, the methodology for educational research, and meta-research of educational disciplines), as well as from the author’s personal experiences conducting field research during the past three years and her profound reflections on the nature of the social transformations taking place in late 20^th century China. During the Exploratory Research phase, “New Basic Education” research—which consists of reconstructive research on educational theory and practice—regards the rebuilding of educational aims as its theoretical starting point. Additionally, “New Basic Education” research regards schools, which provide nine-year compulsory education as the entire unit of practical research. The research also focused on classroom education, teaching reform, and school management for the experimentation and reform of the schools. As for the core issue of methodology, the crux of the issue lies in how to deal with the relations between theoretical research and practical research and the relationship between theoretical researchers and practical researchers.     

The concept mapping heuristic as viewed by some Australian and Indonesian science teachers

This paper reports a study on concept mapping involving 14 Australian and 9 Indonesian science teachers. After a training and practice session in concept mapping, the teachers were surveyed on four scales: “Learning it”, “Teaching it”, “Useability by students”, and “Perceived benefits”. While the teachers' attitudes were generally favourable interesting differences were discerned among scales, among teachers of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, and between countries. Specialization: Social psychology of science learning, eco-culture and metalearning in science. Specializations: Eco-culture and metalearning in science; distance education delivery systems.     

Teachers’ Inclusive Strategies to Accommodate 5th Grade Pupils’ Crossing of Cultural Borders in Two Greek Multicultural Science Classrooms

The demographic changes in Greek schools underline the need for reconsidering the way in which migrant pupils move from their everyday culture into the culture of school science (a process known as “cultural border crossing”). Migrant pupils might face difficulties when they attempt to transcend cultural borders and this may influence their progress in science as well as the construction of suitable academic identities as a means of promoting scientific literacy. In the research we present in this paper, adopting the socioculturally driven thesis that learning can be viewed and studied as a meaning-making, collaborative inquiry process, we implemented an action research program (school year 2008–2009) in cooperation with two teachers, in a primary school of Athens with 85% migrant pupils. We examined whether the two teachers, who became gradually acquainted with cross-cultural pedagogy during the project, act towards accommodating the crossing of cultural borders by implementing a variety of inclusive strategies in science teaching. Our findings reveal that both teachers utilized suitable cross-border strategies (strategies concerning the establishment of a collaborative inquiry learning environment, and strategies that were in accordance with a cross-border pedagogy) to help students cross smoothly from their “world” to the “world of science”. A crucial key to the teachers’ expertise was their previous participation in collaborative action research (school years 2004–2006), in which they analyzed their own discourse practices during science lessons in order to establish more collaborative inquiry environments.     

What makes a professional learning community possible? A case study of a Mathematics department in a junior secondary school of China

The concept of “professional learning community” (PLC) has been suggested as a tool to improve teachers’ professional competency and students’ learning outcomes since the mid-1990s. In such a community, teachers can share their individual practices with the aim of searching for “good practice” based on the outcome of collective inquiry. Such a learning process will result in a reculturing of the school community by reshaping the existing values and cultures and resolving problems such as teacher isolation and individualism. China already has a long tradition of teachers working and learning collaboratively, so investigating collaborative efforts in this context may provide a view of how to contextualize professional development of teachers in schools. This study attempts to access teachers’ lenses in order to explore their views on the effects of subject-based professional learning activities. This also helps to explain how teachers work and openly share their practices aiming at improving their professional competency and student learning outcomes within their communities. Also, factors influencing the sustainability of a professional learning community will be discussed.     

Burden of Acting Neither White Nor Black: Asian American Identities and Achievement in Urban Schools

Ogbu’s theory of “burden of acting white” has been one of the most frequently cited studies to explain black and white achievement gap. However, emerging studies have argued that Ogbu’s theory may be limited when examining variability of school achievement among black and white students. Research shows that in addition to culture, other social forces, such as class, peer networks, and school context may play a significant role when accounting for minority students’ academic aspirations and achievement. In the midst of this on-going debate, however, there is a limited understanding of how, if at all, theory of “acting white” plays a role for racial groups other than black and white students. By extending the discussion beyond a black-and-white discourse, this research examines how Asian American students in two different social and economic contexts, negotiate their race and ethnic identities. Framed by a prevalent model minority stereotype that conflates Asian Americans with whiteness, the findings show that portrayal of Asian “success” much like black “failure” cannot be explained solely on their cultural orientation. By comparing experiences of two groups of Korean American students—both high- and low-achieving—in different economic and school contexts, this study illustrates how the two groups of Korean American students adopt different racial strategies depending on their socioeconomic backgrounds, peer networks, and school contexts. Using Korean American students in urban schools as a case study, this research complicates and challenges our understanding of the role of culture in school achievement and illustrates how culture intersects with class, race, and schools. Jamie Lew is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Education, Rutgers University-Newark, 110 Warren Street, Newark, NY, 07102-1814, USA     

Making Science Teaching and Learning Visible Through Web-Based “Snapshots of Practice”

Documentary websites known as “snapshots of practice” provide vivid examples of teachers’ inquiries into issues they have formulated in the context of their own teaching practices and students’ learning. Designed with assistance from Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, snapshots of practice can be accessed in the K–12 section of the Gallery of Teaching and Learning (). Analysis of prospective teachers’ reflections on science-related snapshots of practice indicate that this use of technology enhanced their understanding of inquiry-based approaches to instruction. The paper also illustrates how prospective teachers used an electronic toolkit, , to construct their own snapshots of practice in order to represent what they had learned in a course on methods of teaching science in elementary school.     

Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts: The Figured World of Smartness in the Lives of Marginalized, Urban Youth

How smartness is defined within schools contributes to low academic achievement by poor and racial/ethnic minority students. Using Holland et al.’s (1998) [Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (Eds.) (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.] concept of “figured worlds,” this paper explores the “figuring” of smartness through the perspectives of marginalized youth. The youth made key distinctions between being book smart vs. street smart. This distinction is a direct challenge by the youth to the dominant discourse of smartness or “book smarts” as it operates in schools. To the youth, “street smarts” are more important because they are connected to being able to maneuver through structures in their lives such as poverty, the police, street culture, and abusive “others.” This distinction is key because street smarts stress agency in countering social structures whereas, for many of the youth, book smarts represented those structures, such as receiving a high school diploma. Implications for schools and pedagogy are discussed. B.A. earned from Indiana University – Bloomington, Masters and Ph.D. earned from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Beth Hatt Fis an Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Foundations at Illinois State University where she teaches research methods and social foundations of education. Her current research explores smartness as a cultural construct in schools and the media.     

The significance of mathematical knowledge in teaching elementary methods courses: perspectives of mathematics teacher educators

Our study investigates perspectives of mathematics teacher educators related to the usage of their mathematical knowledge in teaching “Methods of Teaching Elementary Mathematics” courses. Five mathematics teacher educators, all with experience in teaching methods courses for prospective elementary school teachers, participated in this study. In a clinical interview setting, the participants described where and how, in their teaching of elementary methods courses, they had an opportunity to use their advanced mathematical knowledge and provided examples of such opportunities or situations. We outline five apparently different viewpoints and then turn to the similar concerns that were expressed by the participants. In conclusion, we connect the individual perspectives by situating them in the context of unifying themes, both theoretical and practical.