Assessment in Alberta: Six Areas of Concern

This report on the Alberta Student Assessment Study describes the context, methodology, and emergent themes. It outlines the purposes and uses of assessment according to the various stakeholder groups. Using both qualitative and quantitative data from students and parents, as well as educators at all levels, there were six areas or themes that emerged for further exploration: politics of assessment, decision making, teacher learning, communication and relationships, instructional leadership, and fairness and equity.     

A Moral Revisioning of Resistance

Recent educational accountability efforts have married student assessments with reform mandates and sanctions. As a result, students—beginning in early elementary grades—are feeling the pressures of this new era of high-stakes accountability. This article chronicles a story of the consequences of high-stakes testing on a father and his son.     

Teaching: A Job or a Profession? The Perceptions of Educators

Researchers designed a study to investigate educators’ perceptions about whether teaching is a job or a profession. A survey was developed to investigate factors such as individual definitions of a job and a profession, years of experience teaching, grade level or category of education, and individual perceptions of a profession. The respondents were 401 upper-level undergraduate preservice teachers and graduate students who were professional educators. Data collected showed many aspects of individuals’ perceptions of teaching including control of teaching and working situations, ethics, and personal perceptions of being a professional. Based on the findings from the study, researchers concluded that educators believe teaching is a profession.     

The World Trade Center Attacks and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Reflective decision making is an important component in a teacher's professional expertise, and aptness for integrating it into professional practice can be nurtured in most teachers. This article uses vignettes from student teachers’ journals to describe four modes of thinking that can provide a useful framework for fostering growth in novice and veteran teachers’ conceptualization of reflective decision making and the ability to incorporate it into their repertoire of professional competencies.     

Jefferson,The Road to Glory: 1743 To 1776 by Marie Kimball. Coward-McCann,Inc. 335 p. $4.00

As state legislatures and noneducation agents become increasingly involved in regulating the preparation of teachers, the long-term consequences of the resulting policies—which prioritize economic efficiency over investments in the cultivation of a stable, professionalized workforce—are of concern. This article uses insights from political economy to examine the model of teacher preparation that derives from these sources, with particular attention devoted to Indiana's Rules for Educator Preparation and Accountability.     

Impact of Course and Fieldwork on Multicultural Beliefs and Attitudes

This study investigated preservice teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students when progressing through specially designed courses. Data were collected using the Teacher Multicultural Attitude Survey and semi-structured interviews. Analyses indicated that preservice teachers who received more multicultural preparation held more positive attitudes and based their attitudes more on academic preparation than on personal experiences. Preservice teachers who completed the multicultural course and English for speakers of other languages field placement had a more in-depth understanding of how to help culturally and linguistically diverse students.     

Faculty Members' Perceptions of Teacher Preparation Programs

This research study examined faculty members' reaction to criticisms about the quality and design of teacher preparation programs at schools and colleges of education. The researchers found that there is confusion among teacher preparation professionals about their programs and research. The study also showed that, in general, teacher educators are resistant to change.     

Review of Current Periodical Literature

This article examines the connections between No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Effective Schools Research Movement. Using historical methodology, the authors argue that although both were premised on building capacity, over time the reform that became NCLB evolved to focus on accountability. This shift disconnected the reform from its research base, resulting in its failure to bring about equity. To save NCLB, policymakers and scholars should reconnect reform efforts with research and adopt policies that favor inspection.     

Chester Finn and the Future of Whole Language—and Schooling

This year's crop of college graduates will likely have more concrete information stored away than did the crop of 1905. But they may not be as well educated. And they certainly will find it a harder pull to reach the level of worldly accomplishment than has been expected of college graduates at the turn of a century.     

Indispensable but Under‐valued: the exploitation of contract research staff

This article describes a study that looked at the presence of metaphor in lectures given in an International Development department at a British university, and at the problems that this caused for overseas students. It was found that metaphor was extremely prevalent and that it was used mainly for evaluative purposes. The interpretations given by overseas students differed significantly from those offered by university lecturers. The overseas students tended to focus on inappropriate connotations of the vehicle in the metaphor. This often meant that they misunderstood the main points of the lecture and, more importantly, misinterpreted the lecturer's stance towards the topic of the lecture. A number of ways are suggested in which this problem might be alleviated.     

Teachers,School Boards,and the Power of Money: How the Right Wins at the Local Level

Abstract

This article examines national conservative political advocacy groups' growing interest in local politics, and analyzes how they form alliances and gain political power. Following efforts to restrict collective bargaining for Wisconsin public employees, Kenosha school board members' attempts to legally protect teachers' rights provoked concern from nationally financed conservative groups. This article discusses why a small-town school board election attracted such attention, and the significance of increased attention to the local by these national groups.     

Toward a set of design principles for decoding training: A systematic review of studies of English as a foreign/second language listening education

Listening is a major challenge for many English as a foreign language (EFL)/English as a second language (ESL) learners. Many learners find it difficult to immediately process and segment an ongoing stream of sounds. Decoding training is one of interventions that have been used to assist EFL/ESL learners. This paper reviewed empirical studies of the effectiveness of decoding training in developing EFL/ESL learners' listening. We examined the following four major factors: (a) the types of instructional activities used; (b) the effects of decoding training on student listening outcomes; (c) the main instructional enablers of decoding training; and (d) the main instructional barriers to decoding training. The two activities most frequently used for decoding training were dictation and pronunciation instruction. A meta-analysis of 13 intervention studies showed an overall significant effect in favor of decoding training over non-decoding instruction for listening education (Hedges's g = 0.553, CI = 0.348–0.759, 95% confidence interval, p = 0.000), with no evidence of publication bias. Two theoretical frameworks, cognitive learning theory and the attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction model, were used to synthesize 33 studies to analyze the common elements that promote and hinder the development of learners' decoding skills. We proposed a set of design principles for decoding training that are expected to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of decoding training in EFL/ESL listening education.     

Troubling literacy: monolingual assumptions,multilingual contexts,and language teacher expertise

The current educational context in many English speaking countries is one where literacy is understood to be essentially monolingual in orientation; that is, an understanding of literacy around a single common language, with the emphasis on identifying universal, normative ‘standards’ and ‘benchmarks’, such as the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy in Australia, the Primary National Strategy in the United Kingdom, and No Child Left Behind in the United States. This paper aims to problematise such assumptions by examining how teachers, themselves, understand “teaching literacy” when their students come to the teaching/learning relationship with a first language other than English. With a focus on teachers working with bilingual and multilingual students in their early stages of acquiring English as a second language (ESL), the study thus acknowledges the increasingly diverse sociolinguistic profile of students in Australia and elsewhere in the varying degrees of communicative competence they bring to the mainstream in their use of ESL. Moreover, it draws on ESL teacher knowledge and expertise which has been identified as increasingly marginalised within mainstream educational discourse. Through case studies of three ESL teachers in the middle years, salient themes around the interrelated notions of literacy as learning, language for literacy and language as literacy were identified with respect to the literacy needs of second language learners.     

What Do We Really Know About the edTPA? Research,PACT, and Packaging a Local Teacher Performance Assessment for National Use

This article calls attention to the overreliance on research about the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT)—often labeled edTPA's predecessor—as justification for the edTPA. The article argues that the distinctions between the assessments are too vast to rely on PACT data to support the edTPA, given the localized nature of PACT and the way in which it is scored.     

Technology and Distance Learning Lessons from the Nation's Newest University: Perceptions and Reality

Little research has examined preservice teachers’ views on tenure and accountability. This study used a 35-item survey to investigate 89 preservice teachers’ attitudes toward both. Most valued tenure and recognized the importance of ensuring teacher quality. Fewer than one third saw mentoring or collaboration as ways to improve their teaching—surprising in an apprenticeship program. The authors argue for better alignment between teacher preparation and inservice accountability measures, and the importance of inservice mentoring and feedback.     

Shaw on Education

For many Americans, citizenship and patriotism are associated with reciting the nation's Pledge of Allegiance. Therefore, this study asks the following questions: What do future teachers think about the concepts embedded in the Pledge, and what are their opinions on the usefulness of the Pledge in schools, as well as society in general? Results indicated that future or preservice teachers believed the loyalty and patriotic aspects of the Pledge to be useful for K–12 students, but did not find a personal value in their own recitation of the Pledge.     

Changes in Vision: Teachers Engaging in Action Research

This investigation explored the effects of action research on teachers in a graduate education program. Mixed methods were utilized, combining a semantic differential study of student attitudes with qualitative analysis of students' perceptions of their experience as action researchers. Results indicate that participants perceived themselves as changing in their understanding of their professional expertise, their professional identity, and their professional relationships. Results support the use of action research as a key component for teacher development.     

Students Promoted Despite Test Failure

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) dictates students in Grades 3, 5, and 8 pass state tests to be promoted. Accordingly, most state education codes require students to pass reading and math exams for promotion. The majority of those who fail, however, appear to be promoted anyway. This article addresses core questions concerning the paradigm under which NCLB operates, what it means to promote or retain a student, and the consequences of these actions.     

Seeing the Spectrum: North American Approaches to Emotional,Social, and Moral Education

Interest in emotional, social, and moral (ESM) concerns in K—12 education in North America has grown considerably during the past decade. This increased concern is considered a response to the increased prevalence of social problems experienced by children and youth, such as bullying, substance abuse, and depression, and to research indicating that schools can influence the likelihood of students having these types of problems (Schonert-Reichl 2000). Research and theory in psychology which suggests that emotional development is an essential foundation of cognitive development and, therefore, is related to academic achievement also has contributed to this expanded interest (Martin and Reigeluth 1999). A variety of names, including affective education, social and emotional learning, values education, character education, caring education, and moral education, have been used in discussing ESM. Despite the prevalent use of these terms in the literature, the school programs that actually have been implemented under these various auspices are discussed rarely. Further, little, if any, research has explored the relative effectiveness of various approaches. Through a review of the literature, this article provides an overview of the history of ESM education in North America. It also outlines the spectrum of contemporary approaches to ESM education and explores the similarities and differences of these approaches, making suggestions for further theoretical and empirical work.     

Tending School: A Forum on the Experiences of Refugee and Immigrant Students in the United States System

This article contributes to the investigation of refugee and immigrant education. As one part of a comprehensive qualitative study, it showcases the school experiences of three students: Quincy, a refugee from Afghanistan who came to the United States at age thirteen; Emily, an immigrant from Poland who arrived at age six; and Maung, a political refugee from Burma who arrived at age eighteen. The school experiences of these students mirror those of many children who come from countries and communities outside the dominant culture of the United States.The framework of investigation is based on the notion that school life for minority children, in this case, refugee and immigrant students, can be examined from a critical and political perspective; that is, contextualized socially, economically, and politically (Apple, 1990). Students who are not grounded in the mainstream culture struggle to get along in school settings that are institutionalized according to the moral, social, and cultural dimensions of society. Critical theorists contend that student voice can become an organizing force to negotiate and construct multiple interpretations of school life within the reality of institutionalized ways of being in school. In this study, a focus on finding and developing student voice offers the possibility of passages between private and public (Miller, 1990) to permit the sharing and envisioning of multiple interpretations of school life for students and for those with whom they interact with in school settings.