An Information Reformation? Research Expertise in a Populist Context

As a way of exploring how educational research is disseminated in wider social contexts, this article focuses on antagonisms between expertise and populism as broad social discourses. Dimensions of that antagonism include rifts and bubbles, snobbery and narrow-mindedness. The article evaluates two divergent approaches that attempt to ameliorate antagonisms between expertise and populism: doubling-down on rationality, and pivoting to affect. The observations in this study make it possible to imagine broader definitions of expertise that include a greater range of human capacities, and a wider repertoire of reading, including both suspicious and surface readings. Reflexive humility among researchers, and a more inclusive regard for varieties of expertise invite versions of intellectual expertise that eschew arrogance and elitism.     

Students’ Conceptions as Dynamically Emergent Structures

There is wide consensus that learning in science must be considered a process of conceptual change rather than simply information accrual. There are three perspectives on students’ conceptions and conceptual change in science that have significant presence in the science education literature: students’ ideas as misconceptions, as coherent systems of conceptual elements, and as fragmented knowledge elements. If misconceptions, systems of elements, or fragments are viewed implicitly as “regular things”, these perspectives are in opposition. However, from a complex dynamic systems perspective, in which students’ conceptions are viewed as dynamically emergent structures, the oppositions are lessened, and the integrated view has significant implications for theory and practice.     

Latina Mothers of Emergent Bilinguals as Policymakers? Barriers and Opportunities toward Critical Participation in LCAP

Understanding why and how stakeholders become involved in education governance, and with what consequence, is critical to the success of any equity-minded participatory policy. This area of inquiry is especially salient to California’s education law called the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP). LCAP requires local district officials to include families of emergent bilinguals in deciding how to spend nearly $48 billion in education funds. Moreover, it specifically calls for the direct involvement of historically marginalized families, including parents of emergent bilinguals in setting and evaluating LCAP policy decisions. Findings from this study highlight the adversity, tension, and suppression faced by 10 Latina immigrant mothers (mamás) active in a district-level District English Learner Advisory Committee (DELAC). Despite the challenging environment, every mamá regards her involvement as important and intends to continue her advocacy work. Findings also highlight that active mamás do not share a common or clear understanding about LCAP or the role of parents in the new policymaking process – issues that can create barriers to authentic parent engagement in participatory policymaking processes. These issues, however, could be addressed if meaningful dialogue and deliberation opportunities were constructed between parents and district officials.     

Characterizing Children’s Expectations About Expertise and Incompetence: Halo or Pitchfork Effects?

Do children expect an expert in one domain to also be an expert in an unrelated domain? In Study 1, 32 three‐ and four‐year‐olds learned that one informant was an expert about dogs relative to another informant. When presented with pictures of new dogs or of artifacts, children who could remember which informant was the dog expert preferred her over the novice as an informant about the names of dogs, but they had no preference when the informants presented artifact labels. In Study 2, 32 children learned that one informant was incompetent about dogs whereas another was neutral. In this case, children preferred the neutral speaker over the incompetent one about both dogs and artifacts. Taken together, these results suggest that for children, expertise is not subject to a “halo effect,” but incompetence may be subject to a “pitchfork effect.”     

The Emergent Reader’s Working Kit of Stereotypes

This article draws on a careful study of series fiction read in the 1950s to explore how stereotypes feature in the development of a young reader’s competence in learning to process stories in print. Five categories of stereotype are teased out: embodied stereotypes, understood through physical experience; working stereotypes, discerned through reading and then put to use over and over again in successive textual encounters; recurring stereotypes that appear in one book after another; transient stereotypes that are simply never remembered; and subliminal stereotypes that linger unvisited in the mind.     

Knowledge Building Expertise: Nanomodellers’ Education as an Example

The content of the expertise which young natural scientists try to gain by doing science in research groups is a relatively little-explored subject. What makes learning in such settings challenging is that a central part of the expertise is tacit. This study employs empirical methods together with a contextualized approach and interdisciplinary cooperation in order to reveal practicing nanomodellers’ (N = 10) perspectives on their knowledge-building expertise, and on young scientists’ expertise education. Modelling in the virtual world plays a major role in the science of these nanomodellers, as it increasingly does in many fields of science. This study therefore adds to our understanding of the nature of recent scientific knowledge building and expertise development, which can be used in the education of the scientists of the future.     

Developing Preservice Teachers’ Expertise in Equitable Assessment for English Learners

This study illustrated a pathway of growth that a preservice teacher might traverse when learning to use and develop equitable assessments (EA). The study is rare in that it looks at the development of preservice teachers’ understanding and ability to design EA. I examined the understanding and implementation of EA of 23 secondary preservice teachers within two classes. The methods classes focused on the academic content area of science. Participants’ journals, teaching philosophies, and inquiry-based science units served as data sources. Participants progressed from a simple view of EA as “fairness” to a more sophisticated view of EA, including: ways to increase fairness, the importance of challenging students, and using assessments for learning. Results also showed changes in preservice teachers’ views of learners and the purpose of assessment. While understanding developed robustly, teachers’ assessment plans in their units were not as strong. Teacher education programs need to place more emphasis on developing critical understanding of EA practices to meet the needs of diverse learners.     

Preschool Teachers and Children’s Emergent Writing: Supporting Diverse Learners

Early literacy skill development is critical during the preschool years. Under that umbrella is emergent writing, a small but important component of overall literacy development. This article presents two writing strategies: (1) writers’ workshop and (2) dictation within the context of storybook reading that preschool teachers can utilize to target emergent writing development. Modifications for diverse learners are also included throughout.     

Educational Electronic Books for Supporting Emergent Literacy of Kindergarteners At-Risk for Reading Difficulties—What Do We Know So Far?

This article reviews the authors' findings regarding the electronic book's (e-book's) support of emergent reading among kindergarten-aged children at-risk for reading difficulties. All the studies involved use of educational e-books specially designed by the authors to promote literacy among young children in the 5–6 age group. The review focuses on the e-book's contribution to vocabulary acquisition, phonological awareness, concept about print, as well as story comprehension among two groups of kindergartners exhibiting difficulties in language development and emergent literacy: (a) children at-risk for learning disabilities and (b) children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Overall, both groups of children were found to improve vocabulary and phonological awareness following e-book activity in different contexts. These results indicate the e-book's efficacy as an educational tool in heterogeneous classrooms.     

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.     

Exploring Teacher Identity： What Counts as Expertise of a Beloved Teacher

A good teacher is often depicted by virtue of certain isolated competencies, such as knowledge, skills and attitudes. Teachers＇ identity and their spiritual and emotional integrity are often ignored. This paper reports a qualitative study of the professional identity of an English teacher in a middle school to understand the identity and ex-pertise of a beloved teacher. Through interviews and classroom observation, the study reveals （1） that the teacher who owns a more advanced diploma or profes- sional certificate but confines himself/herself to transmitting only formal knowledge is not well received by his/her students, and （2） that the teacher who is appreci- ated by his/her students teaches with heart and integrity of identity, and possesses a capacity for connectedness among his/her personal experience, subject, social context and students＇ needs. The study triggers some implications for pre-service teacher education in China. The authors argue that teacher education programs must concern themselves with nourishing persons rather than technicians who are merely equipped with competencies.     

Preschoolers’ Emergent Literacy Skills: The Mediating Role of Maternal Reading Beliefs

Research Findings: The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between maternal reading beliefs and children's emergent literacy outcomes in light of maternal education. Furthermore, I consider whether maternal reading beliefs may mediate the association between maternal education level and children's print knowledge and phonological awareness while classroom quality, maternal literacy practices, gender, and ethnicity are controlled. Data were collected from a socioeconomically diverse population of 92 mothers and their preschool children from 2 demographically different counties in a Mid-Atlantic state. Correlations among all measures were moderate and positive, with higher levels of maternal education associated with higher scores on a maternal beliefs measure and higher child scores on a print knowledge and phonological awareness measure. Maternal reading beliefs mediated the effects of maternal education level on children's print knowledge and phonological awareness. This pathway remained in the presence of the 4 covariates for print knowledge only. Practice or Policy: These findings have important implications for practitioners as they work to involve parents in students’ literacy development by creating parent training programs that not only integrate but also highlight and even shape maternal reading beliefs.     

Emergent identity and dilemmatic spaces: pre-service teachers’ engagement with EAL collaboration

Integrationist policies that promote the mainstreaming of English language learners are well established in many English-speaking countries. This has led to the embedding of English as an additional language (EAL) methodology in teacher education, and also to the notion of collaboration between English language teachers and content area teachers. Teacher positioning is integral to the processes of collaboration, and in this article it is argued that both sociocultural identity constructs and the notion of dilemmatic spaces can be used jointly to explore this positioning. A framework that draws upon these two theoretical perspectives is discussed. It was developed to investigate pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) perceptions of collaboration with EAL teachers, and is applied to three secondary PSTs who were undertaking an EAL methodology course in an Australian university.     

Mother–Child Referencing of Environmental Print and Its Relationship With Emergent Literacy Skills

Research Findings: Environmental print provides children with their earliest print experiences. This observational study investigated the frequency of mother–child environmental print referencing and its relationship with emergent literacy. A total of 35 mothers and their children (ages 3–4 years) were videotaped interacting in an environmental print–rich play setting. The frequency of environmental print referencing of letters and words was measured. Children were assessed on emergent literacy skills (letter name and sound knowledge, print concepts, phonological awareness, name and letter writing, environmental print reading). In all, 69% of mothers referenced environmental print. After child age, home literacy teaching, and maternal education were controlled for, greater maternal referencing of environmental print was positively related to print concepts and name and letter writing. Child environmental print referencing was positively related to name and letter writing as well as to maternal environmental print referencing. Mothers used a range of mediation strategies to support children's interactions with environmental print. Practice or Policy: Maternal referencing of environmental print may be a useful way to scaffold emergent literacy in young children.     

Protégé Growth Themes Emergent in a Holistic,Undergraduate Peer-Mentoring Experience

Two faculty members developed and implemented a successful, holistic, goal-oriented peer-mentoring project for two years at a midsize, urban university to enhance student success and retention. In year one, 12 juniors and seniors mentored 34 freshmen and sophomores; in year two, 14 upperclassmen mentored 40 underclassmen. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze goal-progress tracking data, postintervention survey data self-reported by protégés, and mentor journals. The following six themes emerged from this data analysis: academic skills and knowledge, career decision-making, connectedness to others, maturity, physical well-being, and aspiration. Findings advance our summary understanding of the context in which students may grow and develop because of holistic mentoring, understanding that may have value in informing the intelligent design of future mentoring experiences. Results also support program efficacy, from an overall standpoint as well as regarding improvements from the year one to year two versions of the program.     

Teaching for Emergent Disciplinary Drawing in Science? Comparing Teachers’ and Children’s Ways of Representing Science Content in Early Childhood Classrooms

Research in Science Education - This classroom-based study aims to contribute knowledge about children’s opportunities to make use of drawing to make meaning in science. Employing a social...     

Transformative Professional Learning Within Schools: Relationship to Teachers’ Beliefs, Expertise and Teaching

Although scholarship and research have demonstrated the positive impact of professional learning on academic teaching and learning, an inadequate amount of research has examined how professional learning is associated with transformative teaching for equity, diversity and social justice. This survey study explored the relationship between professional learning and teachers’ beliefs about diversity, transformative expertise, and transformative teaching by comparing two models of professional learning in 25 small urban elementary schools. Results indicated that factors in both the process and transformative content models predicted differences in teachers’ reported beliefs, expertise, or teaching. While some factors such as learning to teach for social justice consistently predicted increased transformative practices, other factors failed to predict or were associated with decreased transformative practices. After discussing the findings, implications for practice, theory and research are offered.     

Look who’s talking: Emergent evidence for discriminating between differences in listserv participation

This paper reports findings from a study of LookJed, the oldest and largest on-line forum for Computer Mediated Discussion among individuals interested in Jewish education. The study adopted a “cyber-ethnographic” approach, with postings to the forum seen as “acts of communication” that reveal what is important to their authors. An interest in exploring similarities between forum conversations and those in teachers’ lounges led to an investigation of Herring’s claim that most listservs do not include discussion at all, only the trading of information. This investigation found that active forum participants generally use the forum for discrete purposes, most commonly to exchange information about “subject matter” or “teaching material”, less commonly to exchange opinions and ideas, and rarely to do both. Integrating an analysis of patterns of contribution with an examination of their discursive content reveals six preeminent “types” among the population of contributors, each of whom participates in the forum in different ways and acts with different purposes. Although this typology is at best suggestive and needs to be tested against other listserv cases, its easy identification suggests that in order to better understand the cultures of virtual forums, it is important to pursue a more variegated characterization of listserv participants and their motivations than has typically been the case in CMD research where users are most frequently identified as either lurkers or fanatics, or as active or passive participants.