What parts of teaching do academics see as feasible to delegate?

This paper investigates Australian academics' views about teaching by asking them about the aspects of their job they could contract to other. In particular, it contrasts the views of 26 academics the Humanities with those of 26 in the Social Sciences. The results showed no differences as a function of level of appointment or gender but a significant difference by teaching area: academics from the Social Sciences were more likely to approve in general the practice of buying out time. When asked about contracting out specific aspects of teaching, the only area of difference was for marking (Social Sciences were more often in favour). In all other respects, the viewpoints expressed by academics from the Humanities and Social Sciences were very similar. Such approval was rarely given unconditionally, however. Concerns were expressed about the need to maintain some degree of supervision or responsibility for teaching. Academics agreed on their overall goals in teaching, on whether or not lecturing, tutorials and student consultation could be contracted to others and on the ideal amounts of time to spend on teaching, research, and administration. It is argued that this pattern of results is more likely to reflect a difference in implementation of goals rather than a difference in baseline ideas as a result of different cultures in the two teaching areas.     

“I’m a Facilitator of Learning!” Understanding What Teachers and Students Do Within Student-Centered Physical Education Models

The role of the facilitator has become almost synonymously associated with student-centered approaches. However, how a teacher functions as a facilitator is less well defined. This article begins to define teacher action in student-centered learning environments. Through an exploration of teacher behavior, teacher–student interactions, and discussions around teacher-as-activator, the article argues that the teacher must play an active role in the classroom and should be considered much more than a “guide on the side.” Teachers should use a range of direct and indirect behaviors and dialogical exchanges to support and extend learning. These actions and interactions should be contextually relevant and aligned with the learning aims of the student-centered approach. In suggesting that facilitation provides a narrow perspective on teacher action, the article calls for further consideration around teacher-as-activator to consider the teacher as someone who activates new learning possibilities.     

The Roles of Hong Kong Preservice Early Childhood Teachers’ Creativity and Zest in Their Self-efficacy in Creating Child-centered Learning Environments

Research Findings: This study investigated the relationships of preservice teachers’ year of study in the teacher education program, creativity, zest, and self-efficacy in managing children’s behaviors to self-efficacy in creating child-centered learning environments. Data were collected from 275 Hong Kong preservice teachers via self-reported questionnaires. Results showed that creativity had a direct positive linkage with self-efficacy in creating child-centered learning environments. Zest was associated with self-efficacy in creating child-centered learning environments, however, indirectly through self-efficacy in managing children’s behaviors. Year of study was unrelated to both self-efficacies. Practice or Policy: Preservice teachers’ creativity and zest can be conceptualized as personal resources for creating child-centered environments. Teacher education programs should therefore incorporate components of fostering pre-service teachers’ own creativity and zest.     

“I See Trayvon Martin”: What Teachers Can Learn from the Tragic Death of a Young Black Male

The goal of this article is to examine the racially hostile environment of U.S. public schooling towards Black males. Drawing on the work of Foucault (Discipline and punish. The birth of the prison, Penguin Books, London, 1977; Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, The Harvester Press, Brighton, 1982) regarding the construction of society’s power relations and Bourdieu’s (Power and ideology in education, Oxford University Press, New York, 1977; Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. Greenwood Press, New York, 1986; The logic of practice. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990) work concerning how beliefs are established, this article demonstrates how power operates within schools alongside racism, racial profiling, and gender stereotypes to criminalize Black males. Additionally, the utilization of the theoretical lenses of populational reasoning (Popkewitz in Struggling for the soul: the politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher, Teachers College Press, New York, 1998), conceptual narrative (Somers and Gibson in Social theory and the politics of identity, Blackwell, Cambridge, 1994), and critical race theory (Delgado and Stefancic 2001) links the common narrative and the cultural memory of Black males to the death of Trayvon Martin and the treatment of Black males in schools.     

“Do you see what I see?” Reading a different classroom scene

This paper examines the problem of representing a research site in poststructuralist terms, suggesting that “data” often taken for granted cannot be read to represent “reality” or “truth.” The representation of classroom life produced for analysis is both multifaceted and contradictory. The researcher's positioning within the major discourses governing educational practice may have as much influence on what is seen in the classroom as does the researcher's physical positioning within material reality. Rather than being seen as an impediment to ongoing educational research for change, the findings presented offer a challenge to researchers to make explicit their underlying interests and agendas.     

A National Investigation of Teachers’ Environmental Literacy as a Reference for Promoting Environmental Education in Taiwan

Taiwan's government enacted the Environmental Education Act in June 2011. In the beginning of the implementation of the Act, a national assessment of schoolteachers’ environmental literacy was performed in order to establish the baseline for evaluating the effectiveness of environmental education policy. This large-scale assessment involved a large sample size of in-service teachers across schools at all levels and regions in Taiwan using the stratified random sampling method. Data showed that the teachers have satisfactory levels of environmental knowledge and attitudes, but presented low degrees of environmental action. Differing from previous research results, elementary teachers performed better than high school teachers on this assessment, which may be attributed to their teacher training experiences. Results from this study may provide implications for teacher professional development programs and school environmental education policy.     

“Promoting Acceptance” or “Preparing Warrior Scholars”: Variance in Teaching for Social Justice Vision and Praxis

A growing body of research explores theoretical models of teaching for social justice in P-12 classrooms and in teacher education. However, many of these models fail to account for the relationship between teachers’ social justice frameworks and their classroom practices. In this article, I use vignettes drawn from a recent study of secondary English Language Arts teachers to illustrate how differences in social location and sociopolitical emphasis affect teachers’ approaches to justice-oriented curriculum, pedagogy, and social action. This article concludes with implications for teaching and teacher education, including strategies for using these findings in preservice classrooms.     

“In A Position I See Myself in:” (Re)Positioning Identities and Culturally-Responsive Pedagogies

Culturally-responsive pedagogies require moving beyond blanket assumptions about learners to focus deeply on local meaning-makings. This narrative analysis case study examines the ways a 20-year-old African American man challenges the negative educational identity with which he is forced to contend as he navigates a large and complex urban public school system. The ways in which Jamahl, a seeker of a High School Equivalency, refuses interpellation as an uneducated learner destined to be “nothin'” provides insight as to how formal education might be more responsive to learners' negotiation of deficiency discourses. Embracing agency, specifically through awareness of the ways Jamahl employs (re)positioning practices, this narrative analysis case study highlights paths for researchers and practitioners to tap into learners' resources to recognize and foster powerful learning identities.     

“Only When I Am Not Ashamed of Myself Can I Teach Others”: Preservice English-Language Teachers in Vietnam and Code-Switching Practices

As the younger generation in Vietnam increasingly switches between the English and the Vietnamese languages, numerous linguistic and sociocultural strictures arise. Foregrounding the preservice English-language teachers of this generation, this article locates them in a dilemma between the discourse of globalization and their code-switching practices, on the one hand, and the moral-guide duty they are expected to fulfil within the discourse of linguistic nationalism on the other hand. Drawing on a case study conducted with survey questionnaires (N = 483) and focusing on interviews and focus groups (N = 15), this article reports the confusion, the decisions, and the negotiations made by different preservice teachers as they were faced with this dilemma. Particularly underlining the theme of negotiation, the article proposes certain changes to the English-language-teacher training curriculum in Vietnam.     

What do secondary trainee teachers say about teaching as a profession of their “choice” in Malawi?

This interview-based qualitative study is concerned with the recruitment of secondary teachers in Malawi. This study shows a range of perspectives for pursuing a teacher training course: failure to follow a desired career, springboard to other careers, to upgrade, and teaching out of vocation. It shows that trainee teachers held a range of images about teaching: its ability to enhance knowledge; low pay with no incentives, low status profession, and lack of trust of male trainee teachers. Teacher educators and policy makers need to consider the perspectives of trainee teachers to reduce resource wastage and support trainee teachers appropriately.     

“I Am Not a Shelter!”: Stigma and Social Boundaries in Teachers’ Accounts of Students’ Experience in Separate “Sheltered” English Learner Classrooms

This study investigates how teachers interact with immigrant-origin youth in school-based contexts of reception that mediate youth's educational opportunities. One understudied context is sheltered instruction, where English learners (ELs) are placed into separate content-area courses to target their linguistic needs. This qualitative study highlights the unintended consequences of ELs’ placements by examining 3 teacher cases in depth. Teachers’ accounts reveal that EL content courses designed to increase access were, in fact, stigmatizing spaces where students made social distinctions and engaged in impression management to mitigate perceptions that they lacked intelligence because of their programmatic placements. Teachers also managed stigma in distinct ways, representing different orientations and communication strategies in response to students’ experiences of stigma. This investigation raises questions about the tensions embedded in how language status, race, and classification intersect with the very solutions intended to ameliorate inequalities, as well as teachers’ roles in the education of immigrant EL-designated youth.     

Community Elders: The Roles of Parents in a School of “Choice”

This paper critiques the common argument that schools will become more responsive to parents and more equitable when chosen by the clients they serve. Based on a qualitative study of an urban Catholic high school that is chosen by an increasingly diverse clientele, the paper demonstrates that, even in schools that are outwardly characterized by values cohesion, shared goals, and voluntary affiliation, interaction between a school and its environment is likely to be a process of ongoing negotiations and unarticulated struggles for voice among unequals. The study therefore draws into question two assumptions: (1) that the status and power of clients will be subordinated to pedagogical and equity concerns in shaping the distinctiveness of market-driven schools, and (2) that strong school cultures, created through voluntary affiliation, can mediate the effects of race, ethnicity, class, and gender in the socialization of students to the distinctive norms and values of a school.     

How do Early Childhood Education Teachers Perceive Their Expertise? A Qualitative Study of Child Care Providers in Lapland, Finland

Every preschool age child in Finland has the right to child care. Well-educated staff consists of all-round experts who work in versatile contexts with various children in a multi-professional collaboration. This staff is one of the strengths of the Finnish child care system. The aim of this article is to clarify the expertise of those early childhood education teachers, who have the competence of kindergarten teachers (n = 80) and discuss how the development of early childhood education teachers’ expertise could be supported in a small country like Finland, and more specifically, in its northernmost part, the province of Lapland. This was a qualitative study. The data consisted of the early educators’ stories of their growth toward expertise. The analysis method was content analysis. Four themes emerged from the analysis of the early educators’ growth toward expertise. According to the informants, education, work experience, personal life history and personal attitudes toward work had been the most influential variables in the process of growth toward their expertise. This research showed that the development of early childhood education teachers’ expertise necessitates new kinds of working methods and measures for educational planning. In addition, there is need for individual development plans as the work has become more and more collegial and it is necessary to expand a notion of individual expertise into the realm of collaborative and socially shared expertise.     

Control as Care: How Teachers in “No Excuses” Charter Schools Position Their Students and Themselves

Abstract

This qualitative study focuses on how early career charter school teachers (n?=?20) in schools utilizing a “no excuses” discipline approach describe their interactions with students. Using positioning theory as an analytic tool, we explore how teachers engage the language of no excuses discipline and associated behaviors to position their students as passive beings unaware of “what is best for them” and potential deviants needing oversight. In this way, relationships were largely described as focused on control and compliance. The findings raise questions about how no excuses systems shape teachers’ understandings of care for their students as well as how teacher-student relationships develop.     

“It Bothers Me,but I Will Not Bring It into the Kindergarten”: Gender Perception Conflicts of Religious Kindergarten Teachers as Reflected in Their Work

The article describes a study on the gender identity of kindergarten teachers in the Israeli State Religious Education System (Hemed). The aim was to investigate their perception of gender identity in light of Orthodox feminism and discover how this is reflected in their work, particularly in the Torah stories they tell. The study, based on a narrative research method comprising seven teachers, suggested a link between their gender perceptions and attitude toward Orthodox feminism, and their attitude toward patriarchal Bible stories. The discomfiture and internal contradictions characterizing their perceptions reflect the diverse attitudes in the religious public to this issue.     

High-School Teachers’ Attempts to Promote Self-Regulated Learning: “I may learn from you, yet how do I do it?”

This study examined how urban high-school students responded to increased academic expectations. The intervention included increased expectations for reading and writing, collaboration, and the completion of multi-day assignments. Twenty-four students (8 lower, 8 average, and 8 higher performers) from 4 classrooms were interviewed across a 9-week period to evaluate their reactions to the increased expectations. While students approached lessons with learning versus performance orientations, they were unsuccessful because they could not transfer classroom successes to their outside of school studying efforts. Their difficulties were related to a lack of strategies, a failure to manage distractions, or an inability to monitor studying behaviors. Discussion focuses on the difficulties among students based on performance levels and on the challenges of increasing academic expectations within a climate of high-stakes testing.     

“What do you do in child care?” children’s perceptions of high and low quality classrooms

Children’s perceptions of their child care experiences in classrooms that varied in quality were explored in this study. One hundred twenty-two children were observed and interviewed about their likes and dislikes in 4 high and 4 low quality classrooms. Children verbalized an accurate understanding of procedures, events, and activities, but their responses differed by classroom quality. Children in low quality centers listed activities as rigidly sequenced events, whereas children in high quality centers highlighted notable events and numerous choices. Play was the favorite activity of all children in all classrooms. Mean behaviors, circle time, and nap time were primary dislikes that did not vary with classroom quality. Children in both types of environments offered many more positive than negative perspectives, revealing an optimistic outlook that transcended the quality of the setting. Results are discussed with regard to the contributions of children’s understandings to the complex issues of child care quality.     

“I Just Want to Be Myself”: Adolescents With Disabilities Who Identify as a Sexual or Gender Minority

Abstract

Adolescents with disabilities who identify as a sexual or gender minority are at high risk for negative school experiences and poor outcomes, including peer rejection, bullying, and dropping out. Using an intersectionality framework, this study examined how multiple marginalized identities influence sense of self and school experience for this population. Findings reveal a complex picture of lived experiences and support the need for important changes in school practices.     

Helping Pre-Service and Beginning Teachers Examine and Reframe Assumptions About Themselves as Teachers and Change Agents: “Who is Going to Listen to You Anyway?”

The focus of this article is how to ensure (beginning) teachers’ needs as practitioners are part of the discursive dialogue in physical education teacher education programs. We consider the relationship between ‘structure’ and ‘agency,’ teachers as ‘change agents’ and refer to ‘workplace learning’ as we examine the extent to which the social structure of the school and the teaching profession, and?/?or the capacity of the individual to act independently, ultimately determines a teacher's behaviour in reaction to teaching expectations. We are interested as physical education teacher education faculty in how we (1) strive to help pre-service teachers examine and reframe assumptions about themselves as teachers and change agents, and (2) examine taken-for-granted school practices and processes. We share ways that physical education teacher education programs could encourage pre-service teachers agency and the relationship between initial teacher education and induction.