Community Involvement in a Place-Based Program for Hawaiian High School Students

This study examined the development of community involvement in a place-based high school program for at-risk youth. Teachers and community members founded the program to address concerns about low achievement and high dropout rates among Native Hawaiians. In addition to funding, community members provided program development, supervision of students' service-learning, cultural consultation, political support, and teacher and curriculum development. Collaborations were sustained by open communication, the development of a common set of values among a diverse group of people, and flexibility of community members' schedules. Challenges to community involvement included a lack of support from school leadership, teacher burnout, and occasional interpersonal conflicts.     

Readiness,Instruction, and Learning to be a Kindergartner

As children enter school they learn to take on the role of student. This qualitative study describes how the children in one classroom learned what it meant to be a kindergartner in the context of a community meaning of readiness for school. Analysis of classroom observations and parent, teacher, and student interviews indicate that this school community held a coherent meaning of readiness. This meaning provided the framework for instructional activities and served to help parents understand their children as students. Finally, it helped to frame students' interpretations of their first public school experience through their involvement in classroom tasks.     

Conversations around the Large Table: Building Community in a Portuguese Public Kindergarten

This article analyzes how one teacher, Ana, builds community in the daily life of her classroom in Figueirinha, a Portuguese public kindergarten. It begins by briefly critiquing the dominant research discourse in early childhood education and arguing that community should be central both to life in early childhood classrooms and to research in those classrooms. Figueirinha, Ana, and the Large Table that is the center of Ana's classroom are introduced. Ana's understanding of community is explored by focusing on six themes: membership, awareness, negotiation, responsibility, ritual, and group memory. Ana's practice is illustrated and analyzed through the use of vignettes. The article concludes with a discussion of Ana's practice and her commitment to the community of the classroom.     

Teacher's aides in kindergarten: Effects on achievement for students with disabilities

Over the past 20 years, the number of teacher's aides in the United States has more than doubled, potentially in response to the growth of special education programs now taking place in general education schools. Surprisingly, little research at all has focused on the role that teacher's aides may play in improving student achievement, and no known study had examined this for students with disabilities. The author addressed this void by examining how teacher's aides link to achievement outcomes for students with disabilities in kindergarten. Using nationally representative data, the findings suggest that students with disabilities in full-day kindergarten have higher reading and mathematics outcomes at the end of kindergarten when the classroom has a teacher's aide. In contrast, there was no observed benefit for students with disabilities in part-day kindergarten. The size and strength of this relationship differs by individual characteristics and teacher and classroom characteristics. Implications are discussed.     

From ‘you’ to ‘we’: A foreign language teacher's professional journey towards embracing inclusive education

This qualitative case study explores how a novice foreign language teacher negotiated personal and professional identities and positioned herself and students in relation to classroom and broader cultural communities through pronouns. The participants included a Turkish teacher and six students at an American university. The teacher's use of pronouns we, you, and they was explored using video-recorded classroom observations and discourse analysis. The findings indicated the different ways the teacher used pronouns in the classroom to include/exclude or invite students into Turkish community, and how the switches between personal and professional perspectives signaled the teacher's journey towards embracing inclusive education.     

LEARNING LESSONS ABOUT DIVERSITY: FIELD EXPERIENCES IN THE PREPARATION OF TEACHERS

Abstract

This article describes one way in which teacher educators can gain a new perspective on integrating theory and practice. By accompanying teachers and student teachers on field trips, teacher educators have the opportunity to enhance their understanding of the day‐to‐day life of a classroom teacher and become a part of the school community.

Participating in a field trip offers a chance to observe classroom management strategies; engage in informal interactions with children, teachers, and parents; develop trust among classroom practitioners; witness emergent curriculum; and participate in authentic assessment.

The author documents a visit to the zoo with kindergarten students, teachers, student teachers, and parents from an urban school and how the visit impacted on her working relationship with cooperating teachers, student teachers, and kindergartners.     

Kindergarten Teachers' Use of Developmentally Appropriate Practices and Attitudes About Authority

This study examined the relationship between kindergarten teachers' use of developmentally appropriate practices and their attitudes toward authority in the classroom. The study found an overall low use of developmentally appropriate practices. Instead, the classrooms exhibited academically oriented, skill-centered programs. However, kindergarten teachers who rated themselves higher in authority sharing as opposed to authority controlling were more likely to use developmentally appropriate teaching strategies as delineated by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Aspects of the teachers' professional experience and education had little relationship to their attitudes about authority in the classroom. The positive relationship between an authority-sharing attitude and developmentally appropriate practices suggests that more importance be placed on developing teachers' and prospective teachers' attitudes about adult/child authority orientation than on simply prescribing overt teacher behavior.     

Learning to teach in a context of education reform: liberal studies student teachers' decision‐making in lesson planning

Liberal studies is a new subject in the new senior secondary curriculum in Hong Kong. This study attempted to identify factors that shape liberal studies student teachers' decisions in lesson planning. Based on interview data and lesson plans developed by the student teachers, this article maintains that four factors interacted with the subject features of liberal studies to shape the student teachers' planning decisions, namely, teacher knowledge, curriculum requirements, materials and resources, and interaction with equal and more capable partners. This paper further looks into how teacher knowledge expresses itself at different stages of lesson planning. The findings suggest that to facilitate enquiry learning in students, liberal studies teachers need to adopt an enquiry stance in lesson planning. This paper argues that the limitations of liberal studies student teachers' content knowledge need to be addressed in teacher preparation programmes and suggests teacher networking as one way to strengthen novice liberal studies teachers' content preparation. The implications for teacher education are discussed.     

Sense of School Community for Preschool Teachers Serving At-Risk Children

Research Findings: Challenging the development of high-quality preschool education is the instability of the preschool teacher workforce, blamed in part on workplace conditions including isolationism, perceived lack of career reward, and lack of preparation. Little attention has been given to whether a preschool's organizational climate can mitigate these challenges, despite demonstrated workplace climate effects on teachers' attitudes, commitment, and practices in kindergarten–Grade 12 teachers. This study investigated preschool teachers' perceptions of a positive workplace climate (i.e., sense of school community); predictors of these perceptions (teacher qualifications and organizational features); and relationships among teachers' sense of community, classroom teaching quality, and attitudes toward teaching in a sample of 68 preschool teachers serving at-risk 4-year-olds. Overall, teachers provided high ratings for their sense of school community, although moderate interprogram variability and moderately large to large intraprogram variability existed. Teacher qualifications and preschool affiliation did not predict teachers' sense of community, but preschool size predicted perceptions of collegial support. Perception of collegial support and program influence was significantly related to positive attitudes toward teaching; only perceptions of program influence were related to classroom quality. Practice or Policy: We discuss the potentially important role of work environment in bolstering the quality and stability of the preschool teacher workforce.     

Lessons for Preschool Language Socialization from the Vantage Point of the First Day of Kindergarten

All 12 kindergarten classrooms from a small town/rural Midwestern county were observed for the full session on the first day of school to determine teachers' language and classroom practices. Data collection included completion of a classroom checklist by the investigator and running accounts of classroom events with verbatim notes of teacher language. The findings from this study provide evidence of demands for entering kindergartners to process complex language, organize themselves and their materials, and comply with many new rules and procedures. Based on these data, the author and participating teachers present recommendations for preschool teachers, kindergarten teachers, and researchers. The findings provide convergent validity for previous surveys of teacher expectations for children at kindergarten entry. They can be used by preschool personnel to plan preschool language experiences to assist young children's transition to kindergarten. The method of classroom observation employed here can also help local personnel in varied communities to shape a more seamless system of experiences for the early years.     

Quality in Kindergarten Classrooms: Observational Evidence for the Need to Increase Children's Learning Opportunities in Early Education Classrooms

Research Findings: Using observational data gathered in 730 kindergarten classrooms in 6 states, the present study focuses on the quality of children's learning opportunities in kindergarten classrooms. Findings show that overall, children experience moderate to low levels of quality in the areas of classroom organization and instructional support in kindergarten. Results are also presented in comparison to children's experiences in the pre-kindergarten year. These comparisons indicate that kindergarten children spend a greater proportion of the school day in language arts, math, and whole-group instruction and less time in centers than they do in pre-kindergarten. An examination of predictors of kindergarten classroom quality indicated that program characteristics (i.e., adult–child ratio, length of school day) and teacher psychological variables (i.e., beliefs and depressive symptoms) were stronger predictors of classroom quality than were teacher experience and educational background. Practice or Policy: Findings are discussed in terms of implications for children's academic and social development in kindergarten as well as for kindergarten teacher preparation and development.     

“Verbal Ping Pong” as Culturally Congruent Communication: Maximizing African American Students' Access and Engagement as Socially Just Teaching

African American youth have been disciplined and dismissed from classrooms for engaging in culturally-based communication practices that teachers misinterpret and perceive as disruptive. Teachers have significant power in how they communicate with their students. White teachers should be especially aware of this power because misunderstandings around communication often stem from cultural differences. This study illustrates the promising practice of a white teacher who integrated African American students' culturally-based literacy practice of “verbal ping pong” into English subject matter instruction. Ethnographic methods that foreground the perspectives of student participants illuminated the significance of this highly interactive discourse, while discourse analysis showed how it functioned as culturally congruent communication to promote students' access to classroom discourse and engagement in subject matter learning. By showing how culturally congruent communication can provide equitable access to learning opportunities for all students, this study renders a promising representation of socially just pedagogy.     

Play is not the work of the child: Young children's perceptions of work and play

Using qualitative methods of participant observation and in-depth interviewing, this research explored kindergarten and first and second grade children's perceptions of classroom activities. Young children perceived classroom activities in terms of what they considered to be work and what they considered to be play. Children identified many messages they received from the classroom context, their peers, and their teachers that contributed to their distinctions. Distinguishing elements included the obligatory nature of activities, the cognitive and physical effort required, the involvement and evaluation of the teacher, and the fun children experienced while engaged in activities. Children saw some activities as “in-between” work and play. A work-play continuum is presented that incorporates children's characterizations.     

Hugging the teacher: reading bodily practice in an Israeli kindergarten

This paper, based on an ethnographic study of an Israeli kindergarten, describes the practice of hugging, by the girls, of the teacher, and the latter's response to the girls' initiative. Based on Bourdieu's concept of habitus and the assumption that embodiment is crucial to social–cultural learning, the paper demonstrates the complex interweaving of social meanings that may be experienced through, and read into, the practice of hugging. By focusing on this single bodily practice, and endeavouring to reveal some of the richness of interpretation that emerges out of such a focus, the paper aims to show how the educational researcher, in setting out an array of possible readings, may provide teachers with innovative ways of seeing the routine practices of classroom life.     

CHILDREN'S AFFECTIVE ORIENTATIONS IN PRESCHOOL AND THEIR INITIAL ADJUSTMENT TO KINDERGARTEN

Children's prior attitudes toward school may be an important entry factor to consider in their initial adjustment to kindergarten. This short‐term longitudinal study examined children's affective orientations and other school‐related perceptions and approaches to learning in late preschool and then 1 to 2 months after entry into kindergarten. Child, parent, and teacher reports were obtained, and classroom practices were observed. Findings showed that children who anticipated liking school demonstrated more positive approaches and adjustment in kindergarten than did less enthusiastic children. Children's approaches to learning in the classroom, reported by teachers and parents, were similar across the transition from preschool to kindergarten, despite notable differences in practices. Recommendations for practice include attending to children's affective orientations, involving multiple informants in school readiness assessments, and fostering communication among teachers in school transition activities.     

Readiness, Instruction, and Learning to be a Kindergartner

As children enter school they learn to take on the role of student. This qualitative study describes how the children in one classroom learned what it meant to be a kindergartner in the context of a community meaning of readiness for school. Analysis of classroom observations and parent, teacher, and student interviews indicate that this school community held a coherent meaning of readiness. This meaning provided the framework for instructional activities and served to help parents understand their children as students. Finally, it helped to frame students' interpretations of their first public school experience through their involvement in classroom tasks.     

Thanks to referees

This study, part of a larger linguistic ethnographic enquiry carried out in two primary school classrooms in Flanders and the Netherlands, sheds light on the perils faced by the ethnographer caught between pupils’ inventiveness and his own ethnographic naivety when dealing with these pupils’ ethnolinguistic identity construction. The study first focuses on a classroom interaction set up by the teacher, who - because of the presence of the classroom ethnographer - wishes to construct one pupil's identity accordingly to a presupposed yet untapped ethnolinguistic affiliation that matches the ethnographer's ethnic background. Second, the study takes a reflexive peak at the ethnographer's own performance and at how he stumbles into a trap set up by two multilingual pupils through emblematic language use. The article concludes by drawing a number of considerations with regard to linguistic ethnography and the interface between the ethnographer, the object of knowing and the known. It advocates for an interest in the mundane construction of sameness rather than solely on its ruptures.     

Singing our song: the affordances of singing in an intergenerational,multimodal literacy programme

This exploratory case study examined the affordances of singing as a multimodal literacy practice within ensembles that featured art, singing and digital media produced in an intergenerational programme that served a class of kindergarten children and community elders. The programme that was set up by the study in collaboration with a rural school and elders' organisation saw participants meet one afternoon a week for most of a school year. Study questions concerned the meaning making and relationship‐building opportunities afforded to the participants as they worked through chains of multimodal projects. Data were collected using ethnographic tools in an elders' home where the projects were completed and in the kindergarten where project content and tools were introduced to the children and extended by the classroom teacher. Themes were identified through the juxtaposition of data in relation to the literature and study questions. Results indicate that singing provided opportunities for participants to form relationships and make meaning as a group while combining modes. Study findings foreground the communicative power of singing and suggest how singing, when viewed through a multimodal lens, might be a potent tool for multimodal literacy learning.     

Voicing the challenges faced by an innovative teacher community

This research draws on sociocultural theories of learning and activity theory to explore the challenges faced by an innovative community of teachers in Central Finland. The aim of the teacher community was to develop a stream of foreign‐language (FL)‐mediated teaching and learning in the locality from kindergarten to upper secondary level. To achieve this goal, the teachers needed to form coherent groups within the member schools, as well as between the schools. The aim of this research is to give voice to the challenges identified by the teachers and in so doing give voice to the teacher community itself. Recognising the voice of this community also contributes to a broader conceptualisation of teachers and teaching both within and beyond the classroom. The data were gathered during a number of community activities and thematically analysed to identify recurring challenges the participants identified and encountered. The challenges became manifest in both the talk and activities of the community. The positive teacher responses to the community highlighted the value of this kind of interaction for often isolated teacher practitioners. The wealth of data also produced through these activities suggests that further exploration and development of teacher activity outside of the classroom would be a worthwhile endeavour.