Safety,celebration, and risk: educator responses to LGBTQ professional development

Research has explored multicultural teacher education from multiple, sometimes divergent perspectives; yet, these studies agree that what passes for multicultural education fails to address issues of educational inequity. This paper is part of a larger evaluation study of Reduction of Stigma in Schools (RSIS) – a professional development program aiming to empower educators to create affirming environments for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning (LGBTQ) youth. Interview data indicate that though workshops utilized a critical approach, what teachers embraced was a call to understand and “protect” LGBTQ students through the “safety” discourse – a form of understanding and valuing the “cultural other” – and investment in one time “visibility” or “celebration” events as symbols of improved school climate. Further, educators framed LGBTQ issues as “risk” issues rather than as equity issues, which continue to mark LGBTQ students as “victims” or “problems” in need of saving or solving. We posit that responses to RSIS content reflect educators’ understanding of their obligation to “diversity” as presented during their teacher preparation programs and that workshop content which resonated with them was that which they could easily fit into these familiar frameworks.     

An Assessment of Pronouns as Linguistic Cues for Predicting Work Attitudes

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (Reich, 1993) proposed that the pronouns employees use to describe their organization reveal information about their levels of engagement and affective commitment at work. In particular, he predicted that employees who describe their organization using the pronoun “we” are more engaged and committed than those who use the pronoun “they” in describing their organization. Reich's proposal has intuitive appeal and has been repeated in popular press accounts, but the accuracy of his prediction has not been empirically evaluated. In this article, we systematically examine the “Reich test” and find that the gender of the respondent is an important boundary condition to Reich's prediction. That is, our findings suggest that use of the pronoun “we” may serve as a predictor of work engagement and affective commitment for men, but not for women. We discuss the implications of these findings and the promise of exploring employees' linguistic indicators to understand social, affective, and cognitive psychological processes.     

“Regressed experts” as a new state in teachers’ professional development: lessons from Computer Science teachers’ adjustments to substantial changes in the curriculum

Due to a program reform in Israel, experienced CS high-school teachers faced the need to master and teach a new programming paradigm. This situation served as an opportunity to explore the relationship between teachers' content knowledge (CK) and their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This article focuses on three case studies, with emphasis on one of them. Using observations and interviews, we examine how the teachers, we observed taught and what development of their teaching occurred as a result of their teaching experience, if at all. Our findings suggest that this situation creates a new hybrid state of teachers, which we term “regressed experts.” These teachers incorporate in their professional practice some elements typical of novices and some typical of experts. We also found that these teachers' experience, although established when teaching a different CK, serve as a leverage to improve their knowledge and understanding of aspects of the new content.     

Asia-born New Zealand-educated business graduates' transition to work

In 2008 the Asia New Zealand Foundation commissioned a three-year project examining Asia-born New Zealand-educated business graduates' study to work transitions. Data were collected through annual online surveys and in-depth interviews. Graduates were asked to discuss their post-study experiences, reflections on studying in New Zealand, and perceptions of their New Zealand business education. Participants included 171 (phase one), 76 (phase two) and 41 (phase three) students and recent graduates. All except one were based in New Zealand or the Asia region. In this paper we draw on “engaged pedagogy” and “functional capabilities” perspectives to consider phase two and three participants' accounts of their study to work transition pathways. Specifically, we examine two “functional capabilities” that participants discussed in relation to their post-study experiences: having economic opportunities and developing a sense of affiliation. We highlight some barriers to each “capability” that emerged in participants' accounts and consider how participants envisaged their role in fostering ongoing Asia-New Zealand connections. We conclude with some suggested implications for policy and practice in New Zealand and in internationalized HE more generally.     

The strong poetry of place: a co/auto/ethnographic journey of connoisseurship,criticality and learning

Through a co/auto/ethnographic approach informed by a theoretical bricolage of critical pedagogy, place-based education, science education, human geography, feminism, and indigenous ways of knowing, the authors demonstrate the power of place in and as pedagogy. Using rich personal narratives, they reclaim their stories as an urban island-dweller and nomadic music-dweller, and they illuminate place as an epistemological, ontological and axiological anchor for the Self in the neoliberal wasteland. Specifically, the authors attend to their familial lineages and reasons for migrating from Southern Europe to the USA’s Northeast section, the Northern Mid-Western and to the Southeast. They examine their and their families’ connections with place in relation to the ideological fictions embedded within their shared narrative of “for a better life,” which is the story that was told to them about their families’ migrations. They probe under the surface by asking, “better than what,” “according to whom,” and “why?” In doing so, they peel back the veil of hegemony and expose the ways that economic disadvantage impacted their families’ relationships with their homelands. The article concludes by conceptualizing critical connoisseurship as a means for guiding students to tap into the embodied knowledge of place in order to notice, question, appreciate and critically reflect upon curricular content and subject matter and resist neoliberalism’s removal of person from place and local knowledge.     

The Good,the Bad,and the Ugly of Pedagogy in Harry Potter: An Inquiry Into the Personal Practical Knowledge of Remus Lupin,Rubeus Hagrid,and Severus Snape

On the 20th anniversary of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, we examine the narratives of pedagogical practice of three teachers at “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”. By drawing on these characters’ stories of teaching as presented in Rowling’s novels, we foreground their personal practical knowledge and the relationship of this knowledge to their curriculum-making. We do this in order to highlight the importance of narrative perspective and context in the assessment and evaluation of teachers’ pedagogical practice.     

学校道德社会化构成要素研究:进展与困惑

Moral socialization of students consists of five elements: process, subject, agent, content and pattern. This paper discusses the studies of the former three: their progress and perplexities, covering the following puzzles: “Why does the youth socialization take longer time?” “Are there any critical periods in student socialization?” “How do we identify over-socialization?” “Is ‘Education is student-based’ a scientific statement?” “How do we assess the contribution percentages of the four key agents of student socialization?”     

郑州图书馆藏宝卷版本述略

中原地区现存大量宝卷,尚未得到关注、整理与研究。郑州图书馆藏宝卷86种,内容丰富,包括“神卷”“小卷”“科仪卷”三大类;版本珍贵,有刻本2种,抄本84种;其中新发现的宝卷7种,异名宝卷17种,现存最早宝卷抄本7种。这批宝卷抄本的题记信息保存了关于抄写人、宣卷人的珍贵史料,从中可以考察宝卷的抄写、流传和收藏情况。     

苏格兰PSE课程:设计、实施与启示

苏格兰"人格与社会教育"(PSE)课程起源于20世纪70年代,PSE课程不仅是苏格兰基础教育卓越课程八个课程领域之一,同时也是儿童和青少年学习的核心内容之一。PSE课程聚焦于儿童与青少年的心理与生理健康、人际关系和社会技能,致力打造多学科融合课程,也被苏格兰地区当作学校开展心理健康教育的重要途径。PSE课程基准给出的指标清晰明确,课程内容覆盖面广、划分详细,课程实施以PSE课程共同体开展,凸显了多方协作的优势。苏格兰PSE课程的设计与实施对我国中小学心理健康教育的开展与心理健康课程的改革发展有一定的启示作用。     

Problems with Feminist Standpoint Theory in Science Education

Feminist standpoint theory has important implications for science education. The paper focuses on difficulties in standpoint theory, mostly regarding the assumptions that different social positions produce different types of knowledge, and that epistemic advantages that women might enjoy are always effective and significant. I conclude that the difficulties in standpoint theory render it too problematic to accept. Various implications for science education are indicated: we should return to the kind of science education that instructs students to examine whether arguments, experiments, etc. are successful, rather than ask who presented them; when considering researchers and students for science education programs we should examine their scholarly achievements, rather than the group to which they belong; women should not be discouraged from engaging in “mainstream” science research and education (or other spheres of knowledge considered as “men’s topics”) and men should not be discouraged from engaging in what are considered “women’s topics” in science (or outside it); we should not assume that there are different types of science for women and for men, nor different ways for women and men to study science or conduct scientific research.     

High Pressure Reform: Examining Urban Schools’ Response to Multiple School Choice Policies

Over the past several decades, policymakers have sought to address the problem of school failure by exposing traditional public schools to competitive market forces. In this analysis, we examine how two traditional public schools in a “high pressure/high choice” urban school cluster in Texas responded to a number of overlapping choice policies that have caused them to lose significant numbers of students. We explore how these two traditional public schools made sense of, and formulated a response to, their multiple “competitors,” how they balanced market pressures and the other external (accountability) pressures that they faced. In this analysis, we illustrate how competition does not always lead to significant or productive change in low performing schools.     

论《古文渊鉴》体制“权舆于六籍”

《古文渊鉴》是清初一部大型古文选本,选文自《左传》至两宋,共计1365篇。《序》中指出古文体制“靡不根柢于群经,权舆于六籍”,属于我国传统文学批评“文本于经”的范畴。考查《古文渊鉴》的体制与内容,我们发现其“尊经”更多地是从内容和功用方面,而非文体方面。其以“经”为径,“明道”为旨,“致用”是目的。这对于我们更深刻地理解《古文渊鉴》和“文本于经”的内涵都具有积极的促进作用。     

Coaching for the PISA test

Coaching is known to improve student performance on tests with high personal relevance (“high-stakes tests”). We investigate whether the same holds for a test that has no personal relevance for the students taking it (“low-stakes test”). More specifically, we explore whether student performance on the reading and mathematics assessments of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) can be fostered by coaching (and administering a pretest). Coaching and pretest effects were studied for each content domain separately in a pre-/posttest quasi-experimental design. To examine differential effects of academic tracks, samples were drawn from German Hauptschule and Gymnasium schools. Results show that only the combined effects of pretesting and coaching have substantial positive effects on student performance. Implications for the interpretation of large-scale assessment programs are discussed.     

Quasi-appropriation of dialectical materialism: a critical reading of Marxism in Vygotskian approaches to cultural studies in science education

In this review essay we examine five categories of dialectical materialism proposed by Paulo Lima Junior, Fernanda Ostermann, and Flavia Rezende in their study of the extent to which the articles published in Cultural Studies of Science Education, that use a Vygotskian approach, are committed to Marxism/dialectical materialism. By closely examining these categories (“thesis, antithesis and synthesis,” “unity of analysis,” “History,” “revolution,” “materialism”) we expect to enrich the general discussion about the possible contributions of Marxism to science education. We perceive part of science education practice as orientating toward positivism, which reduces human beings—teachers, learners and researchers—to isolated individuals who construct knowledge by themselves. The very same approach aggravates the inner contradiction of the capitalist society demanding commitments from researchers to continually build innovative science education from human praxis. Nevertheless, it is necessary to situate ourselves beyond a formal commitment with dialectical materialism and hence reach the heart of this method. Besides understanding the researchers’ commitments, we question the extent to which the respective research helps to radically refresh the current view on science, science education practice, and research in science education.     

Assessing equity beyond knowledge‐ and skills‐based outcomes: A comparative ethnography of two fourth‐grade reform‐based science classrooms

When evaluating equity, researchers often look at the “achievement gap.” Privileging knowledge and skills as primary outcomes of science education misses other, more subtle, but critical, outcomes indexing inequitable science education. In this comparative ethnography, we examined what it meant to “be scientific” in two fourth‐grade classes taught by teachers similarly committed to reform‐based science (RBS) practices in the service of equity. In both classrooms, students developed similar levels of scientific understanding and expressed positive attitudes about learning science. However, in one classroom, a group of African American and Latina girls expressed outright disaffiliation with promoted meanings of “smart science person” (“They are the science people. We aren't like them”), despite the fact that most of them knew the science equally well or, in one case, better than, their classmates. To make sense of these findings, we examine the normative practice of “sharing scientific ideas” in each classroom, a comparison that provided a robust account of the differently accessible meanings of scientific knowledge, scientific investigation, and scientific person in each setting. The findings illustrate that research with equity aims demands attention to culture (everyday classroom practices that promote particular meanings of “science”) and normative identities (culturally produced meanings of “science person” and the accessibility of those meanings). The study: (1) encourages researchers to question taken‐for‐granted assumptions and complexities of RBS and (2) demonstrates to practitioners that enacting what might look like RBS and producing students who know and can do science are but pieces of what it takes to achieve equitable science education. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 459–485, 2011     

论日本保育思想的形成、发展及其现状

近代以来,日本的保育事业逐步发展,保育思想也不断发展。今天其《幼儿园教育要领》和《保育所保育指针》的基本思想,就是重视孩子自身的各种感受,重视孩子的嬉戏和生活体验。从"健康"、"人际关系"、"环境"、"语言"和"表现"五个领域规定了比较具体的目标和内容,以确保孩子在各个方面都能够"体验"、"感受"和"享受"各种各样的事情。嬉戏作为孩子的自发的活动,是培养其身心协调发展的基础的重要的学习。日本学前教育机构的工作就是从五个领域指导孩子通过嬉戏和生活体验逐步形成生存的基础,逐步为生存能力的形成奠定基础。     

Math Anxiety,Need for Cognition,and Learning Strategies in Quantitative Communication Research Methods Courses

To understand student learning in undergraduate quantitative communication research methods course, this study examined relationships between perceptions of course topic difficulty, course topic understanding, and their relationship with students’ level of math anxiety, need for cognition, and learning strategies. A total of 196 participants voluntarily took part in this study. Results revealed that a higher level of math anxiety leads to a higher level of perceived learning difficulty for topics in the course and leads to a lower level of content understanding of the topics. For topics related to “Research Methods and Measurement,” a higher level of need for cognition results in a lower level of perceived learning difficulty and results in a higher level of content understanding. Use of critical thinking learning strategy has a significantly positive effect on perceived content understanding of topics related to “Research Methods and Measurement,” as does elaboration learning strategy on that of “Statistics.”     

How African American Parents Understand Their and Teachers' Roles in Children's Schooling and What this Means for Preparing Preservice Teachers

Preservice teachers are socialized by their own raced, classed, and gendered experiences to expect “caring parents” to behave and contribute in certain ways to their children's schooling. Preservice teachers who come from widely divergent backgrounds from the communities in which they serve can sometimes be skeptical of parents who are not involved in children's schooling in ways that are familiar from their own upbringing. Moreover, much of the existing scholarship on parent involvement and the transition to school takes a top-down approach that discounts the important knowledge parents bring to the table. This is a study of African American parents of young children who were preparing to transition to kindergarten or first grade that proposes an alternate conversation about what we can learn from parents when we examine their ways of framing and enacting “involvement” in their children's school lives. African American parents and caregivers (N?=?25) participated in qualitative interviews. Thematic analyses of the interviews revealed that participants constructed preparation for the transition to school broadly, as preparation for the “real world.” I will discuss the implications of the study for teaching, teacher education, and future research, so that preservice teachers and teacher educators can begin to build a greater imagination for parent involvement.