School Context and Charter School Achievement: A Framework for Understanding the Performance “Black Box”

This article explores the relationship between charter school racial composition, school environments, and student achievement. We offer an original framework for understanding school context and its influence on schooling outcomes. We conclude that policymakers could better attend to the persistent educational inequality that has shaped U.S. schooling if when designing school choice plans they took account of student racial composition even in a postdesegregation environment.     

“Drag Me to the Asylum”: Disguising and Asserting Identities in an Urban School

In many inner-city high schools, students face violence on a regular basis. Authorities contain and curtail the use of weapons and other acts that threaten the individual and the functioning of the institution. These attempts to create a safe environment separate students, who are largely black working class and poor, into criminal and noncriminal categories, creating a labeling system that denies complex individuality. In this article, I demonstrate how teens reaffirmed and subverted harmless/dangerous labels by disguising themselves and creating personas through the use of clothing, graffiti, and poetry. These forms of communication allowed them to achieve anonymity, assert violent identities, and resist dehumanization. Ultimately, I analyze how poetry became a means to explore individual interests, fears, and fantasies. Through personification and metaphor, students articulated and elided psychological and physical constraints despite the monolithic labels of school. Their work often conveyed a subtlety that subverted institutional categories that otherwise reduced them to a single identity. Drag Me to the Asylum emerged from research conducted in and outside a large urban high school. From 1992 until 1997, I collected student poetry, listened to the stories of students and school staff, and taped over 100 hours of unstructured interviews with students and teachers.     

Implementation Effects of a Program for the Training of Coaching Skills with School Principals∗

In this study, the implementation effects of a program for the training of coaching skills to Dutch primary school principals are described. Coaching is a form of in‐class support intended to provide teachers with feedback on their own functioning, and thereby to stimulate self‐reflection and self‐analysis in order to improve instructional effectiveness. To assist school principals in their attempts to coach teachers, a training program was designed and evaluated. Based on the pre‐ and post‐training ratings of coaching conferences, a significant treatment effect was found for the coaching skills concerned with the development of autonomy (empowerment), feedback, and agreement on classroom observational goals. The pre‐ and post‐training ratings from the coached teachers themselves showed a significant treatment effect for the coaching skills concerned with the development of improvement plans. Although the training provided for the school principals was directed at the coaching functions of consulting and confronting, the majority of the school principals conducted coaching conferences that emphasized predominantly the function of consulting.

     

Un-“Chartered” Waters: Balancing Montessori Curriculum and Accountability Measures in a Charter School

More than 6,000 charter schools exist in the United States, and of these 120 are Montessori charter schools. When studying charter school practices, researchers often examine issues such as performance accountability measures and effectiveness of charter school curricula. In doing so, the outcomes often overlook the challenges for teachers as they attempt to blend the demands of being a charter school with performance accountability and charter school philosophies, such as the Montessori philosophy. In this longitudinal case study, I examined the ways in which teachers in a charter Montessori school used professional development to help balance the demands for standardized testing performance and Montessori goals. The findings illustrate that significant challenges exist for teachers blending multiple educational goals but that professional development can aid teachers in filling in gaps in their existing curricula. This study encourages (1) researchers to question the ways in teachers can be supported through professional development to meet accountability measures and (2) stakeholders to consider how accountability measures focused solely on student performance can have detrimental effects on charter school curricula implementation and teacher retention.     

Struggling to Recognize their Existence: Examining Student–Adult Relationships in the Urban High School Context

In today’s reform context, much attention is placed on policies and outcomes and far less emphasis on understanding the social and cultural processes in schools. Using case-study methodology, I examine relationships between low-income, urban high school students of color, and the school adults with whom they interact. Using grounded theory, students’ experiences are analyzed and interpreted through the lens of recognition. Recognition is used as both a theoretical and empirical concept to illuminate students’ experiences and voices, especially since the construct is largely absent in the U.S. education discourse. Students revealed that being known by adults, talking with adults, engaging with adults personally, and experiencing encouraging adults were all critical elements of recognition. I suggest that student–adult relationships, via the practice of recognition in urban schools, needs to be interrogated, deliberate, and political so that the transformative purpose of education can be realized.

“Finding the Joy in the Unknown”: Implementation of STEAM Teaching Practices in Middle School Science and Math Classrooms

In response to a desire to strengthen the economy, educational settings are emphasizing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum and programs. Yet, because of the narrow approach to STEM, educational leaders continue to call for a more balanced approach to teaching and learning, which includes the arts, design, and humanities. This desire created space for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) education, a transdisciplinary approach that focuses on problem-solving. STEAM-based curricula and STEAM-themed schools are appearing all over the globe. This growing national and global attention to STEAM provides an opportunity for teacher education to explore the ways in which teachers implement STEAM practices, examining the successes and challenges, and how teachers are beginning to make sense of this innovative teaching practice. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implementation of STEAM teaching practices in science and math middle school classrooms, in hopes to provide research-based evidence on this emerging topic to guide teacher educators.     

Where All the Good Teachers are Cape Verdean Americans: A White Teacher’s Identity Positionings in an Urban Elementary School

The Urban Review - This study examines how a white language teacher’s understanding of race affected her teaching practice in an urban elementary language classroom with predominantly Cape...     

A University–School Partnership to Examine the Adoption and Implementation of the Ohio Community Collaboration Model in One Urban School District: A Mixed-Method Case Study

School improvement models are expanding to incorporate priorities around positive youth development, safe and supportive school climates, school mental health, and school–family community partnerships. A partnership was formed between researchers and district/school leaders to examine the 3-year adoption and implementation of 1 such exemplary model, the Ohio Community Collaboration Model for School Improvement, in a Midwest urban district serving a large number of students at-risk. Researchers and district/school leaders examined what types of system-level capacities developed, and explored student- and school-level outcomes that occurred over the course of implementation. Multiple innovations resulted, such as strengthened policies, improved partnerships and collaborations, and enhanced funding streams. Students' perceptions of academic press, school climate, and academic motivation improved over the 3 years. Academic report cards show progress toward districtwide improvement. Implications are drawn for researchers and school leaders, especially in relation to the design, implementation, and evaluation of collaborative models of school improvement.     

“We Teach All Hearts to Break”: On the Incompatibility of Education with Schooling at All Levels,and the Renewed Need for a De-Schooling of Society

‘We teach all hearts to break’ was graffiti spray painted on a school building in London's Notting Hill Gate in 1968/69 by the Situationst-influenced group King Mob cited by two former members in Paddington Bear (1988). ‘Once upon a time there was a place called Nothing Hill Gate.’ Retrieved Sept. 30, 2011, from http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/recent/34-archivelocal/120-once-upon-a-time-in-notting-hill     

“To Virgo or not to Virgo”: Examining the Closure and Reopening of a Neighborhood School in a Predominantly African American Community

Neighborhood schools engender the idea that schools can be integral community centers, with learning facilitated by the personal relationships developed among teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Neighborhood schools also have represented stigmatized segregated spaces located in communities with high poverty rates, low high school graduation rates, and little opportunity for social mobility. Drawing from print and online media sources related to the closure and reopening of D.C. Virgo Middle School (Virgo), a racially- and economically-segregated middle school in an urban, southern community, this study uses conceptual content analysis to examine the competing discourses surrounding Virgo. The authors conclude that the public discourse examined herein represents the tension between public schools as stigmatizing beloved spaces. As a stigmatizing space, the school can transfer the stigmatized identity to associated students and personnel. As a beloved space, the school can nurture possibility and hope.     

“That’s How We Roll”: A Case Study of a Recently Arrived Refugee Student in an Urban High School

This critical case study of one, Somali Bantu male high school student illuminates the struggle for recently arrived refugees at the high school level. Few educational research studies describe how recently arrived refugee students and their families make their transition to US schools (Ngo et al. in Hmong Stud J 8:1?C35, 2007; Hones and Cha in Educating new Americans: immigrant lives and learning. Erlbaum, Mahwah, 1999; Igoa in The inner world of the immigrant child. Erlbaum, Mahwah, 1995). Studies that examine how race, county of origin, and low socio-economic status affect refugee students also are few in number. Specifically Kamya (Soc Work 42:154?C165, 1997) argues that there is a compelling need for research that investigates how racism and stereotypes of Black Americans affect the experiences of African black immigrants and refugees. Rong and Brown (Educ Urban Soc 2:247?C273, 2002) add that black newcomers students often face a triple disadvantage of being black, having limited access to educational opportunity, and being poor. These challenges are particularly relevant for high school students as they have a limited amount of time to acquire proficiency in English and content area knowledge before transitioning to post-secondary education or the work force. In order to better understand how some of these processes work for a recently arrived refugee student in an urban school district, this paper examines the educational adaptation and coping strategies of one Somali Bantu male high school student and his family to the US public school system during the 2007?C2008 school year through the lens of intersectionality.     

“Dangerous Work”: Improving Conditions for Faculty of Color in the Community College

This qualitative investigation of the experiences of faculty of color at community colleges identifies current conditions for this population and suggests potentials for ameliorating conditions that inhibit their job satisfaction. We argue that the current conditions for faculty of color, based upon their expressed experiences at the community colleges, are deleterious to their professional performance, to their positive self-image, and to their contributions to their institutions. Alterations to these current conditions are unlikely without systemic institutional change. Indeed, without improvement to these conditions, the job satisfaction of faculty of color is not likely to change.     

Being an unaccompanied- a dilemma for policy? Representations of unaccompanied teenagers in Norwegian policy

ABSTRACT

The discourse surrounding unaccompanied teenagers’ migration seems to favor a willing-participant model in their journey to asylum. When such a discourse is prominent, other restrictive measures are taken, such as invoking temporary, limited permits to control the migration of children without an adult. Further, policy frameworks are not consistent; they change depending on the government in power and its political-ideological leanings. As such, this paper aims to uncover the representation of unaccompanied teenagers within the changing political ideology and discourse that emerge in four Norwegian whitepapers between 2004 and 2016. Inclusion, education, and immigration policies are critically analyzed to identify how they discursively represent unaccompanied teenagers seeking asylum. I argue that these papers’ changing ideological representations of unaccompanied teenagers reveal the essentialization of collective identities that have shifted during the period identified.     

‘The Rag-bag of All the Subjects’: English in a London Grammar School, 1945–1963

Evidence from a recent study of English teaching in three London schools in the post-war era suggests that changes to curriculum and pedagogy, commonly attributed by historians to the 1960s, were well underway in the 1950s. Major changes associated with ‘New English’ occurred when teachers began taking the lives and experiences of their pupils as material for English lessons. However, changes in an all-boys grammar school followed a different path. Using oral history methods combined with mixed documentary evidence (including teachers’ records and pupils’ work), we reconstruct the experience – the aims and beliefs – of a left-wing grammar school teacher, and we show how, under the influence of F. R. Leavis and the Scrutiny movement, he made response to literature a central activity at a moment when the place of English was uncertain, and the subject lacked academic prestige.     

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.     

The Tech Trajectory: Examining the Role of College Environments in Shaping Students’ Interest in Computing Careers

Research in Higher Education - Computing career opportunities are increasing across all sectors of the U.S. economy, yet there remains a serious shortage of college graduates to fill these jobs....     

Being a Stranger and the Strangeness of Being: Joseph Conrad’s ‘The secret sharer’ as an allegory of being in education

Abstract

Joseph Conrad’s ‘The secret sharer’ has often been associated with what can be called initiation stories. However, in this article I argue that Conrad’s text is more than that. It can, I suggest, be read as an allegory of the inaccessibility to reveal the essence of being in command, being in education, and also the inaccessibility of the essence of the meaning of the text itself. It keeps its secret by allegorically staging alternative readings. This inaccessibility gives rise to a feeling of strangeness, of the uncanny, that must be faced in order to pass through the initiation into the unknown that all the possible allegorical meanings of the text produce. In other words, ‘The secret sharer’ has an educational value that goes beyond the act of merely using it to exemplify a certain type of initiation. In this way I connect Conrad’s text to the themes of strangeness and the stranger and show how they mutually can involve a reading of education and literature as two distinct discourses of learning.