Students' self‐regulation and teachers' influences in science: interplay between ethnicity and gender

The purpose of this study is to explore students' self‐regulation and teachers' influence in science and to examine interplay between ethnicity and gender. Analysis of data from seven Oslo schools (1112 sampled students in the first year of high school) shows that the ethnic minority students reported using learning strategies in science more intensively than ethnic majority students and they had a stronger motivation to learn science. Ethnic majority students are defined here as students who were born in Norway and have at least one parent born in Norway. The study also shows that minority students generally evaluate their science teacher's influence on their learning more positively than the majority. The strongest interplay effects between gender and ethnicity are found in students' perceptions of the relevance of science, as well as their degree of negative responses to the pressure to learn science.     

Dynamics of parent involvement at a multicultural school

This paper describes a research project that uses Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and cultural and social capital to penetrate how middle‐class parents exercise influence and form positive relationships at the neighbourhood public school that serves various ethno‐cultural groups of students. One group of white, economically privileged students have populated the school since its founding; the others are new, immigrant, and diverse in ethnicity, race, and immigrant status. The parents of the former group of children enjoy active involvement in the school and trusting relationships with teachers that involves their differentiation from and exclusion of the new immigrant group. While the paper affirms the importance of social class differences in parent involvement, it integrates additional dimensions of immigration status and ethnicity.     

Changes in parental involvement in secondary education: An exploration study using the longitudinal study of young people in England

Empirical research on parental involvement in children's education often makes the assumption that levels of involvement remain fixed over time. This paper highlights evidence from a longitudinal study that half of parents of young people in Year 9 reported becoming more or less involved in their child's school life over a two‐year period and explores the characteristics associated with mothers and fathers that change their levels of involvement. The young person's attitude to school, the mother's relationship with the school, attendance at parents’ evenings and the mother's ethnicity, qualifications and change in economic status had the strongest associations with a reported change in maternal involvement levels. Changes in paternal involvement were strongly associated with the father's ethnicity and the young person's behaviour.     

More ways than one: Federal strategies to equalize access in education and health care

This article examines the responses of school principals from an urban school district to Michigan's zero-tolerance policy. We specifically seek to understand how school leaders interpret and implement the policy and how their administrative discussions subsequently affect the educational experience of children in urban schools. Given that a disproportionately high number of African American and Latino students are negatively affected by this policy, how do school leaders in predominantly African American districts implement it? The findings in this study reveal that the disparate interpretation of the zero-tolerance policy among school leaders and its implementation negatively affects the educational experience of urban students.     

Does it matter who your schoolmates are? An investigation of the association between school composition,school processes and mathematics achievement in the early years of primary education

Although many studies have focused on the importance of school composition for student achievement, there is still no consensus on whether school composition matters to student achievement, and, if so, why. Therefore, the present study investigates the association between school composition and mathematics achievement at the end of second grade in Flanders. International research points to the initial ability level, SES, ethnicity and sex composition of the school as potential variables in explaining differences in student achievement. Moreover, some researchers suggest that schools ‘react’ to their student body and for that reason we investigated the possible association between school composition and school processes. Data from the SiBO Project have been analyzed using multilevel regression and multilevel mediation analysis. The results showed no direct school composition effects with respect to prior achievement, SES, ethnicity and sex on math achievement. We found two small differential effects, indicating that mean school prior achievement seems to positively affect initially high achievers, and the proportion of minority students in school seems to negatively affect students speaking a non‐European language except for Turkish, Arabic or Berber at home. Furthermore, two small indirect effects were found which suggest that schools with a high mean prior achievement or a high mean SES keep in regular contact with their students' parents and this, in turn, appears to enhance students' math achievement. Overall, our results seem to indicate that school composition in the early years of primary education hardly matters.     

New Zealand students' perceptions of parental involvement in learning and schooling

This study investigated the relation between multidimensional aspects of high school students' perceptions of their parental involvement and their achievement. It explored differences in socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicity, gender, and higher and lower achieving students, and a structural model was developed to further investigate these relations. A parental involvement questionnaire and measures of efficacy, liking and achievement in mathematics and reading were administered to a sample of 1,554 New Zealand high school students from 59 schools. In the view of students, there is support for parents to be talking to their children about learning and schooling and having high expectations of them and their future in learning, especially for lower achieving students. Students who claim that their parents are talking with their teachers or attending school meetings are more likely to have lower achievement. The implications from this study relate to developing student self-regulation for learning in home, providing more surface than deeper learning as homework, and assisting parents to learn the language of learning and schooling.     

And now you are getting a teacher with such a long name…

The first school day is marked by strangeness: strange children and strange parents in a relatively strange institution and meet up with strange adults in the guise of teachers. What happens in this encounter between strangers? Is it reasonable to expect that strong and lasting relations are about to develop? Does the feeling of strangeness gradually disappear, or does this initial sense of strangeness frustrate the teacher's pedagogical understanding of the students? A critical pedagogical analysis and a phenomenological interpretation of a teacher's welcoming talk to children and parents on the first day of school are presented and compared.     

At-Risk Students Attending Second Chance Programs: Measuring Performance in Desired Outcome Domains

Meeting the educational needs of at-risk secondary students is a challenge for many states. Some states have blended school reform policies, such as school choice, with specific programs for students at risk of school failure. One blended school choice option that has been in operation for nearly a decade is Minnesota's Second Chance Option. This option allows students at risk of school failure the opportunity to choose alternative programs designed to meet their needs; however, little is known about the effectiveness of these programs. In this article, findings from a study examining a broad array of outcomes for students attending Minnesota's second-chance school choice option for at-risk secondary students are presented. Student performance was assessed in 7 outcome areas, using a model developed by the University of Minnesota's National Center on Educational Outcomes. Students at 3 representative alternative school sites were assessed in the fall and spring of an academic year to determine their level of student performance. This article addresses the performance of persisters (those who remained in the programs) and dropouts, the use of the model for accountability, and the effectiveness of second-chance programs.     

Planning for the Future in Rural and Urban High Schools

Studies of postsecondary aspirations tend to assume that adolescents from different ethnic groups share commonalities of perspective that are unaffected by the areas in which they live and go to school. Largely missing from this literature is a consideration of the intersection of ethnicity, development, and location. This study looks at the ways in which White and Latino students in an urban and a rural high school differ in their perspectives on postsecondary plans according to grade level, ethnicity, and urbanicity. We find a number of differences in student attitudes and behavior depending on whether students attend rural or urban high schools. High school experiences are also moderated by ethnicity across locations. However, with respect to how students want others to see them, students in the rural high school are more like each other than they are like their ethnic counterparts in the urban school. We conclude that, in many respects, both Latino and White students experience schooling and adolescent development differently in rural and urban schools.     

A cross-age study of junior high school students' conceptions of basic astronomy concepts

Junior high school students' astronomy conceptions were analysed by means of a written questionnaire presented to them during the beginning of the first semester. The main findings were as follows: almost half of the students indicated that the cause of the day-night cycle is the Earth spinning on its axis; most students chose as their best account for changes in the Moon's phases the Moon moving around the Earth. Despite that, most students thought that the Moon must be in its Full phase for there to be a total solar eclipse; most students underestimated the distances in the Universe and overestimated the Earth's diameter. A great proportion of students indicated that the reason for the different seasons is the tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the plane of its orbit as it revolves around the Sun. But almost the same number of students chose the varying distance between Sun and Earth or between the Earth, Moon and Sun, as a reason for the seasons. Only a third of the students answered correctly that in Israel's latitude, north of the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun is never directly overhead at noon; most students chose the correct estimate of a month for the Moon revolving around the Earth and a year for the Moon going around the Sun; about a third of the students chose the correct answer that when it is noon in Haifa, it would be about sunset in Beijing (90° east of Haifa). Few students indicated that the fact that we always see the same side of the Moon from the Earth implies that the Moon rotates on its axis once a month.     

Gender and Education: public policy and pedagogic practice

This paper serves two purposes. The first is an examination of a public policy, the Queensland Department of Education's Equal Opportunity Policy for Girls and Boys (1981) and the Implementation Guidelines (1988) for that policy within the context of the pedagogical practices of one secondary school. The second purpose is to answer a criticism often levelled at structural theories of education. This criticism centres around the inability of structural theories to account for the real life experiences of teachers and students. Bernstein's (1986) theory of Pedagogic Discourse and Fernandes’ (1988) work on Resistance theory are applied to three levels of educational practice; public policy, school practices and the everyday experiences of a group of female students. Through this analysis, movement towards a more satisfactory explanation of the intersection of gender and education is made.     

A Cross-age Study of Senior High School Students' Conceptions of Basic Astronomy Concepts

Senior high school students' astronomy conceptions were analysed by means of a written questionnaire presented to them during the beginning of the first semester. The main findings were: (1) Most students answered correctly the questions dealing with the following subjects: the day-night cycle, the reason for the different seasons, and the time of the Moon's revolution around the Earth and the Sun. (2) Most students chose their best account for changes in the Moon's phases as the Moon moving around the Earth. Despite that, most students thought that the Moon must be in its full phase in order to get a total solar eclipse. (3) Most students underestimated distances in the Universe and overestimated the Earth's diameter. (4) Most students answered incorrectly the questions dealing with the following subjects: Sun overhead at noon, longitude time zones, and Moon's rotation. (5) Students studying physics succeeded significantly better than their colleagues in some of the subjects that were taught as a part of their optics and mechanics courses.     

Do socio-motivational relationships predict achievement motivation in adolescents with high and low school self-concepts?

Considering the essential role that socio-motivational relationships at school play with respect to achievement motivation, this study examined the differences between students with a low school self-concept and students with a high school self-concept in a large sample of 7th and 8th grade students (N= 1088; MAge= 13.7) in secondary schools in Brandenburg, Germany. Multi-group structural equation modelling was used to estimate the associations between the variables of socio-motivational support and achievement motivation. The results showed that students with a high school self-concept report higher levels of socio-motivational support than students with a low school self-concept, whereas a teacher plays a more important role in motivating low self-concept students. Furthermore, the results underline the importance of adjusting the teacher's support to the level of the student's school self-concept as one of the possible prevention and intervention strategies aimed at boosting adolescents' achievement motivation after the transition to secondary school.     

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Shia Ismaili Muslim Girls Negotiate Islam in the Classroom

ABSTRACT

This case study investigates the experiences of Shia Ismaili Muslim girls as they encounter themselves as subjects of social studies curriculums on Islam. A postcolonial lens is used to examine differently empowered subjectivities and curricular epistimes within the high school world history context. In an effort to understand their experiences, this study focuses on how the students position themselves in relation to the curriculum, and ultimately asks, to what extent do students from minority communities of interpretation appropriate or resist the authoritative narrative of Islam offered in their classrooms, particularly around the question, “Who is a Muslim?” The central finding revealed a paradox of representation and participation for these students, who found their practice and interpretation of Islam silenced in the classroom curriculum, and yet felt obliged to defend Islam and educate others against stereotypes of Muslims. The implications of this study compel educators to explore decolonial approaches to teaching about the religious other.     

Risk or resilience? What makes a difference?

Dropping out of school has been associated with a student’s ethnicity, socioeconomic status, challenging behaviours and low academic achievement. This paper describes research conducted with 1050 students aged 12–15, in three North Queensland urban high schools to investigate issues related to Indigenous and non-Indigenous students at risk of dropping out of school before gaining adequate qualifications.     

Urban Middle School Students’ Stereotypes at the Intersection of Sexual Orientation,Ethnicity, and Gender

Heterosexual urban middle school students’ (N = 1,757) stereotypes about gender typicality, intelligence, and aggression were assessed. Students (M_age = 12.36 years) rated Facebook‐like profiles of peers who varied by gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Several hypotheses about how the gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation of target peers intersect to shape stereotypes were tested. As predicted, a peer's sexual orientation determined stereotypes of gender typicality, with gay and lesbian students viewed as most atypical. As expected, ethnicity shaped stereotypes of intelligence, with Asian American students seen as most intelligent. Gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation independently and jointly affected stereotypes of aggression. These results demonstrate the value of an intersectional approach to the study of stereotypes. Implications for future research and practice are offered.     

From “survival” to “leadership”: the practice of civic education in Australia

This chapter describes the study as it was conducted in three public high schools in Sydney: a governmental comprehensive high school, a non-government or private high school, and a government “selective school”. The results suggest that civic education revolved around an identifiable, yet not clearly articulated, set of civic values. For teachers, civic education's main goal was to prepare students for harmonious integration into Australia's highly multicultural society, to maintain and reinforce social cohesion, and, consequently, to foster acceptance of diversity. For students, civic education was an enigma. Although they participated in civic education experiences they could rarely identify them as such. Furthermore, few students could identify subject matter of civic education through what was taught in school subjects.     

Do Students' Religion and School Absences Moderate the Effect of Ethnic Stereotypes on School-Placement Recommendations?

The results of two experiments demonstrate that preservice teachers made biased school-placement recommendations depending on student's ethnicity, which on average penalized students from an ethnic minority. Moreover, additional information that was supposed to disconfirm ethnic stereotypes (religious affiliation in Experiment 1, number of missed school days in Experiment 2) led to more high-track recommendations for low-achieving minority students and to fewer high-track recommendations for high-achieving minority students. Conversely, stereotype-disconfirming information exerted little or no influence on the recommendations for high-achieving native students but worsened recommendations for low-achieving students. The results were interpreted as being based either on subtyping (predominantly for minority Turkish students) or subgrouping (predominantly for majority German students) of ethnic stereotypes.     

Where the Action Is: How Drama Contributes to the Art of the Teaching and Learning of English

This paper looks at the way drama works to bring a model of an arts curriculum into reality. He also shows how drama is valuable when discussed as a separate, autonomous subject in the school curriculum as opposed to one subsumed within English. He argues for a view of the arts and gives an example of a sequence of work in an English GCSE class based around Arthur Miller's play View from the Bridge. From this he draws out several strands about the relationship of the drama curriculum to the individual students and teachers, the school, and to culture. He also emphasises the primacy of performance in drama education.