Teachers and Social Class Orientation: An Empirical Note Based on Comparisons with Different Social Classes in Sweden 1

Abstract: Lindblad, S. 1986. Teachers and Social Class Orientation. An Empirical Note Based on Comparisons with Different Social Classes in Sweden. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 30, 181‐192. The study is an exploratory reanalysis of a questionnaire survey of a random probability sample drawn from the economically active population in Sweden. The investigation was carried out in 1980 and includes 1170 subjects. The teachers in the sample were used as a specific category. Their social class orientations were compared with those of different social classes pictured in the sample. The orientations in focus concerned economic contradictions, political preferences, division of labour, and norms of socialization. The results showed that the social class orientations of teachers concerning economic contradictions and political preferences were closest to employers and most distant from workers. In addition, the teachers were the group that was most negative to a vertical division of labour and advocated more liberal socialization norms. These results were empirically related to the social origin of teachers.

     

Facilitators in ambivalence

This is part of a larger ethnographical study concerning how school development in a local educational context sets cultural and social life in motion. The main data in this article consists of semi-structural interviews with teachers (facilitators) who have the responsibility of carrying out a project about formative assessment in upper secondary schools in the south of Sweden. The focus of the study is how the teachers make meaning of their position as facilitators and leaders, how they handle their fellow teachers’ criticism and resistance, how power transforms professional and human relationships, and how complex and weakly articulated power results in conflicting and ambivalent possibilities for action. From our perspective, the resistance the facilitators meet, although the project makes use of a concept that has proved to be successful, reveals an ambivalent structure where the facilitators have to face contradictory demands from different stakeholders.     

TEACHERS' ATTITUDES TOWARD DIFFERENT TYPES OF BULLYING AND VICTIMIZATION IN TURKEY

In the present study, attitudes of elementary school teachers toward different types of bullying (verbal, physical, and relational) were investigated. Six written vignettes describing all types of bullying were given to 405 elementary school teachers (F = 218; M = 187). Results indicated that teachers perceived relational bullying, specifically, social exclusion, less serious than verbal and physical bullying. Unlike previous findings, however, the teachers considered verbal bullying behaviors more serious than physical bullying behaviors and were also more empathetic toward the victim physically bullied and the victim verbally bullied than the victim relationally bullied. Coherent with the findings of empathy, they were also more likely to intervene in verbal and physical bullying behaviors than relational bullying behaviors. Gender of the participant was a significant factor for all variables. The most rated intervention strategy was having a serious talk with the bully, regardless of the type of victimization. Multiple regression analysis illustrated that seriousness and empathy scores both predicted the need for intervention scores significantly in all types of bullying. The findings of this study highlight the importance of increasing teachers’ awareness and knowledge about all types of bullying, their consequences, and intervention skills to lessen bullying behaviors.     

Strategies for counterresistance: Toward sociotransformative constructivism and learning to teach science for diversity and for understanding

This article reports on two types of resistance by preservice science teachers: resistance to ideological change and resistance to pedagogical change. The former has to do with the feelings of disbelief, defensiveness, guilt, and shame that Anglo-European preservice teachers experience when they are asked to confront racism and other oppressive social norms in class discussions. Resistance to pedagogical change has to do with the roles that preservice teachers feel they need to play to manage conflicting messages about what they are expected to do from their cooperating teachers (cover the curriculum and maintain class control) and from their university supervisors (implement student-centered, constructivist class activities), and about what they desire to do as emerging teachers. Although these two forms of resistance are closely linked, in the literature they are extensively reported separately. This study suggests a sociotransformative constructivist orientation as a vehicle to link multicultural education and social constructivist theoretical frameworks. By using this orientation, specific pedagogical strategies for counterresistance were found effective in helping preservice teachers learn to teach for diversity and understanding. These strategies for counterresistance were primarily drawn from the qualitative analysis of a yearlong project with secondary science preservice teachers. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 589–622, 1998.     

SOCIAL DETERMINANTS AND POTENTIALS OF EDUCATION IN LATER LIFE: THE CASE OF AUSTRIA

Various theoretical concepts such as plasticity, competence, and potential have recently been applied to underline the possibility of later‐life development and change. Value and limitations of these concepts are discussed in view of learning in later life. A review of the special case of Austria and the educational attainments of its elderly indicates that social reality is slow in its transformation and that the disadvantageous educational achievements credited to today's older people hardly encourage them in pursuing later‐life studies. The paper reports results obtained by means of two questionnaires filled out by older students and teachers. This empirical investigation examines the influence of societal norms, social setting in institution‐related learning situations (age‐homogeneity vs. age‐heterogeneity), and instructors’ attitudes toward older students. The results demonstrate that permanent education and proper stimulation of the learning processes depend on a complex relationship between (competent) individuals, their social surroundings, and learning conditions that often prove unfavorable.     

Social justice teacher educators: what kind of knowing is needed?

ABSTRACT

What do teacher educators need to know and do in order to move from espousing to enacting social justice in their own teacher educating practice? This article addresses this question by examining scholarship that focuses on the preparation of preservice teachers for social justice. Using five knowledge domains for teaching (personal, contextual, pedagogical, sociological, social) as an analytic lens, the authors examined teacher education literature published between 2010 and 2016 in three international journals from Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. The study reveals that teacher educators in different contexts seem to highlight personal and contextual knowledge in their preparation of equity-minded preservice teachers and provides insight into how they conceptualise educational equity and social justice. The study illuminates what is likely in place in initial teacher education programmes, and what may be needed or missing if teacher educators are to prepare teachers for today’s diverse classrooms.

Abbreviation ITE: Initial Teacher Education ITE     

A New Beginning? John Yandell’s The Social Construction of Meaning: Reading Literature in Urban Classrooms

John Yandell’s The Social Construction of Meaning: Reading Literature in Urban Classrooms provides a powerful counterpoint to current policy discourse in education. By focusing on the social interactions that occur in the classrooms of two English teachers, Yandell shows how their pupils are able to explore dimensions of language and experience that far exceed the outcomes prescribed by official curriculum documents. This is because their teachers conceive of reading as a social activity in which everyone can participate. Yandell thereby affirms the value of a literary education as an integral part of an educational project that is genuinely democratic and inclusive.     

Developing an instrument for assessing students’ concepts of the nature of technology

Background: In Bangladesh, a common science curriculum caters for all students at the junior secondary level. Since this curriculum is for all students, its aims are both to build a strong foundation in science while still providing students with the opportunities to use science in everyday life – an aim consistent with the notion of scientific literacy.

Purpose: This paper reports Bangladeshi science teachers’ perspectives and practices in regard to the promotion of scientific literacy.

Sample: Six science teachers representing a range of geographical locations, school types with different class sizes, lengths of teaching experience and educational qualifications.

Design and method: This study employed a case study approach. The six teachers and their associated science classes (including students) were considered as six cases. Data were gathered through observing the teachers’ science lessons, interviewing them twice – once before and once after the lesson observation, and interviewing their students in focus groups.

Results: This study reveals that participating teachers held a range of perspectives on scientific literacy, including some naïve perspectives. In addition, their perspectives were often not seen to be realised in the classroom as for teachers the emphasis of learning science was more traditional in nature. Many of their teaching practices promoted a culture of academic science that resulted in students’ difficulty in finding connections between the science they study in school and their everyday lives. This research also identified the tension which teachers encountered between their religious values and science values while they were teaching science in a culture with a religious tradition.

Conclusions: The professional development practice for science teachers in Bangladesh with its emphasis on developing science content knowledge may limit the scope for promoting the concepts of scientific literacy. Opportunities for developing pedagogic knowledge is also limited and consequently impacts on teachers’ ability to develop the concepts of scientific literacy and learn how to teach for its promotion.     

AGING ISSUES IN SOCIAL STUDIES TEXTBOOKS

The treatment of four issues related to aging was examined in this study: Social Security, civil rights, political power, and population trends in 19 secondary schools’ U.S. history and government textbooks. In these texts, only Social Security was given adequate treatment. The weakest area was “population trends.” The study concluded that for such a vital topic the coverage of aging issues in secondary textbooks was generally weak and insufficient. We recommend that the role of the aged throughout U.S. history should be addressed and that the rapid changes in demographics, particularly the “graying” of our population, should not be ignored in either history or government textbooks. Even with an expansion in texts of the four topics above, teachers will have to rely on supplementary materials as their primary sources of information.     

Credible or Tentative? A Model of Open University Students with ‘Low’ Educational Qualifications

Changes in higher education have meant that institutions are attracting increasing numbers of mature students, who have diverse social and educational backgrounds and may lack conventional A Level (higher secondary school) qualifications. The present study by Dr. Shelley McAlister, an Open University Social Science Associate Lecturer, concerns a group of mature students at the Open University who entered Level 1 Foundation courses in Technology and Social Science without having A Level qualifications. Although they were all categorised as having ‘low’ educational qualifications, they had a range of educational skills and experiences which meant that they perceived their experience of university study in very different ways. Using a social cognitive framework Dr. McAlister has developed a model of Credible and Tentative students which does not predict drop out, but which focuses on the complex interplay between psychological, social and institutional issues which affected their study.     

Public purpose and the preparation of teachers for rural schools

Abstract

Rural communities need rural teachers who can “ground” traditional school subjects in local realities and dilemmas and at the same time fashion instructional approaches consonant with larger intellectual, ethical, and social purposes. Such teachers are assets rather than burdens to their communities. Only such teachers can cultivate an ethic of responsibility for the health and vitality of the communities of which they and their students are critical components.

This essay examines the role of the university in professionalizing rural teachers. It contends that narrowly utilitarian ends prevail in teacher education programs, and that, in the absence of a substantive definition of educations public purpose, this instrumentalism creates teachers who are ill‐prepared to contribute in meaningful ways to the intellectual life of the communities in which they work. Teacher preparation programs should abandon the instrumental focus. Programs that prepare rural teachers, in fact, confront unique challenges and opportunities to include three themes at their centers: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Democracy.     

EDUCATING MEN WITH REFERENCE TO SOCIAL LEGISLATION

Abstract

A paramount task of religious education should be the exposing and redressing of social injustice. Two of the pervasive and perduring evils of our time are sexism and racism. With their insights into theological authenticity and their skills in both shaping attitudes and inspiring actions, religious educators are in potent positions to effect liberationist change. To do so, they must become comprehensively informed and profoundly committed. They must become transformed teachers of transforming truth.

I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of their massive religious education buildings. Over and over I found myself asking, What kind of people worship here? Who is their God?     

Social learning as approach for teacher professional development; how well does it suit them?

Learning from others has been reported as a productive approach for teacher Professional Development (PD) and is seen as a valuable addition to formal PD. Specific insights into whether social learning suits teachers is still lacking. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to develop and apply an instrument to assess social learning mindedness of teachers. A questionnaire called the “Quiz: Social learning, how does it suit me?” was developed and its reliability and factor structure were explored. A total of 110 teachers, ranging from primary school to pre-university education filled out the Quiz. Results indicated that the teachers were already quite social learning minded; they were positively oriented towards social learning. Social learning mindedness encompassed five underlying factors including counteracting social-learning preferences, teachers’ opinions and preferences related to learning from colleagues/others, their orientation towards collaboration in new approaches to PD, an autonomy factor, and a more general attitude towards knowledge dissemination. Mostly, teachers like to explain and share their knowledge, like to collaborate with others to enhance their knowledge and ask others for advice if they have a problem. At the same time, they want some control over their PD (e.g. the outcomes). The teachers in this sample did not show much preferences that would counteract social learning, leading to the conclusion that social learning suits teachers as a form of PD. The Quiz, which is accessible online (in Dutch), is a useful tool for teachers to quickly get acquainted with social learning.     

The Politics of Emotions in ELT: Structure of Feeling and Anxiety of Korean English Teachers

ABSTRACT

Using the notion of structure of feeling by Raymond Williams, this article seeks to illuminate an ideological understanding of Korean English teachers’ anxiety and deep sense of insecurity in English language teaching (ELT). Through a discussion of how their anxiety is grounded deeply within unequal social relations and how they reframe their anxiety through critical reflection on the cultural and ideological bias of their own anxiety, it points out the intricate relationship between ideology and emotion; teachers’ emotions are shaped by dominant ideologies that constitute the social structures constraining their position as teachers, while their engagement with those emotions also enables their self-transformation towards gaining confidence as teachers. The results of the study emphasise the tension between social structure and agency in teachers’ emotional experiences and discuss implications for teacher education and development.     

Teachers’ professional development: a theoretical review

Background and purpose:?The article reviews studies that focus on the professional development of teachers after they have completed their basic teacher training. Teacher professional development is defined as teachers’ learning: how they learn to learn and how they apply their knowledge in practice to support pupils’ learning. The research question addressed in the article is: How do experienced teachers learn?

Main argument:?The review is framed by theories within the constructivist paradigm. From this perspective, knowledge is perceived as the construction of meaning and understanding within social interaction. The social surroundings are seen as decisive for how the individual learns and develops. It is argued that courses and lectures, or ‘times for telling’, and teachers’ development of a metacognitive attitude are decisive factors for teachers’ learning within a constructivist frame of reference.

Sources of evidence and method:?To attempt to answer the research question, a search was conducted of the subject of pedagogy in the ISI WEB of Science (search undertaken 9 August 2011) using the search strings ‘teacher learning’, ‘teacher development’ and ‘teacher professional development’, and covering the period from 2009 to 2011 to probe the most recent decade of research. Articles that dealt with basic education, primary and secondary school, were selected, and articles that dealt with learning using digital tools and the internet and newly trained teachers were rejected. A set of 31 articles was selected from this search. To ensure width and depth of coverage, this was supplemented by a selection of review studies and research on further education in respect of teachers’ learning. The texts were analysed by means of open and axial coding, developing main and sub-categories.

Conclusions:?The review of articles shows that both individual and organisational factors impact teachers’ learning. Teacher co-operation has importance for how they develop, and some of the teachers can lead such learning activities themselves. Moreover, a positive school culture with a good atmosphere and understanding of teachers’ learning, in addition to co-operation with external resource persons, may impact the professional development of teachers. The article concludes with the reflection that learning in school is the best arena for further development of teachers.     

The Origins of Critical Theory in Education: Fabian Socialism as Social Reconstructionism in Nineteenth-Century Britain

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to examine the influence of Fabian Socialist thinking as the primary force in the development of critical theory as applied to higher education in Britain. The paper covers the impact of scientific Fabian Socialism and the establishment of the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Frankfurt School and the rise of critical theory and pedagogy, and offers a critique of these perspectives. The social reconstructionist theory, worked out in the USA, posits schools and teachers as planned agents of social and cultural reform by addressing and solving practical social problems. The reconstructionists and critical theorists embrace notions of equality, the eradication of social injustices, multiculturalism, increasing levels of social consciousness and the discussion of controversial issues through employment of critical forms of pedagogy. In Britain, Fabian Socialism led directly to the establishment of the Labour Party as a political entity.     

VALIDATION OF THE SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH SURVEY FOR FIVE SOCIOCULTURAL GROUPS: MULTIGROUP INVARIANCE AND LATENT MEAN ANALYSES

Social‐emotional health influences youth developmental trajectories and there is growing interest among educators to measure the social‐emotional health of the students they serve. This study replicated the psychometric characteristics of the Social Emotional Health Survey (SEHS) with a diverse sample of high school students (Grades 9–12; N = 14,171), and determined whether the factor structure was invariant across sociocultural and gender groups. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) tested the fit of the previously known factor structure, and then structural equation modeling was used to test invariance across sociocultural and gender groups through multigroup CFAs. Results supported the SEHS measurement model, with full invariance of the SEHS higher‐order structure for all five sociocultural groups. There were no moderate effect size or higher group differences on the overall index for sociocultural or gender groups, which lends support to the eventual development of common norms and universal interpretation guidelines.     

Digital Literacies Go to School: A Cross-Case Analysis of the Literacy Practices Used in a Classroom-Based Social Network Site

The authors, working from a new literacies studies perspective, suggest that educators can better teach their students if they develop their own knowledge of the purposes, types, and language conventions students use in their informal out-of-school literacy practices. The purpose of this study was to identify the literacy practices used in a classroom-based social network site and determine how these practices reflect digital literacies. By connecting differences in the literacy practices of three fifth-grade girls to the instructional moves made by classroom teachers, the authors were able to identify and describe how classroom teachers unintentionally marginalized the kinds of digital literacies that are valued in the larger society. Findings point to the importance of creating online identities for establishing relationships in a social networking site and a need for teachers to model ways to shift language use when engaging in different writing contexts.     

A comparison of nonreferred,learning-disabled,and mildly mentally retarded students utilizing the social skills rating system

The assessment of social skills deficits has received wide support. Recently, the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) has been developed to assist professionals in assessing social skills. In this study, the Social Skills Rating System was used to compare students who had already been classified as learning disabled (n = 20) and mildly mentally retarded (n = 20) with a group of nonreferred students (n = 20). The results showed that as a group students with disabilities scored significantly lower than the nonreferred group on social skills and significantly higher in problem behaviors. A discriminant analysis revealed that the SSRS was able to predict group membership broadly (e.g., handicapped versus nonhandicapped) but not specifically (e.g., learning disabled, mentally retarded). Moderate Pearson correlations between parents and teacher ratings indicated some consistencies between raters. However, low kappa coefficients showed that parents and teachers are likely to identify different students as having social skills deficits and problem behaviors. Suggestions are given for utilizing the SSRS with other techniques such as interviews and observations in the assessment and remediation of social skills problems.