校长应做教师自主发展的促进者

校长应通过培养教师的自主意识、营造研究氛围、引进评价机制、倡导实践探索等,唤醒、引领、激励、促进教师发展,做教师自主发展的促进者。     

论农村初中英语教师的非智力因素激发者角色

要改变农村初中生厌学英语的现状,提高英语教学质量,需要做出艰辛的工作。其中,英语教师扮演的角色起着举足轻重的作用。论文通过调查访谈了解学生的需求,分析了农村初中学生的英语学习现状,探讨了学生所需求的英语教师角色——非智力因素激发者;探讨了激发和培养学生非智力因素的策略。     

Facilitators and barriers to African American high school students' self-determination skill expression

We conducted four focus group interviews with 24 high school youth to examine facilitators and barriers to African American high school students' expression of various self-determination skills (e.g., choice/decision making, self-advocacy, goal setting, and attainment etc.). The majority of our research participants were African American, with one student identifying as multiracial (African American and White). Key findings revealed that personal (e.g., desire to graduate from school) and contextual factors (e.g., school counselor and teacher support) influenced the participants' expression of multiple self-determination skills. We also found that some of the participants' motives for utilizing or not utilizing specific skills were influenced by what they perceived as racist, punitive, and restrictive school practices (e.g., teachers holding negative perceptions about African American students and school counselors restricting their access to advanced courses). Findings from this study support ongoing calls for educators to consider students' cultural backgrounds and lived experiences when promoting their expression of self-determination skills.     

Many districts left behind: An individual change analysis of inequity in the Kenyan primary educational opportunities (2001–2007)

The study examined variations in district performance in KCPE national examination in Kenya between 2001 and 2007. The individual change model revealed that district poverty rate was not a significant predictor of either the initial district performance (2001) or the rate of change over the seven-year period. The regional context of North Eastern Province had the lowest initial KCPE performance rates followed by the Gusii districts of Nyanza. However, the model revealed that the KCPE performance rates among districts located in the North Eastern Province are predicted to improve at an annual rate of 10.31 percentage points. The study recommends that educators and policy makers seek ways to address educational under-performance and low participation rates in Kenya without over-reliance on poverty reduction programs alone.     

Critical reflection through personal pronoun analysis (critical analysis) to identify and individualise teacher professional development

A central part of teacher education is critical reflection. To engage with the new – embrace change – is inherently difficult. The solution is teacher control of change. Those who embrace change, or not, are identified in their language. Pronoun analysis situates a teacher and determines areas of discomfort for change. Particular personal pronouns are evident when one is connected to, or distanced from, an artefact. This provides an avenue to individualise and pinpoint professional development (PD) requirements. Compared to traditional PD, this is efficient as it targets areas of discomfort for professional learning. Ideally, a teacher experiments with the new, indicates confidence and presents expertise to enable transmission into teaching. In this article, I illustrate how pronoun analysis was applied through interview data where science teachers were engaged in a discourse of Information Communication Technology integration. From this prior research data, a case is presented for individualised language analysis to direct PD. When a teacher is the active agent who self-analyses his or her own discomfort, an ownership pathway for directed proactive learning is created that goes beyond critical reflection into the new domain of critical analysis.     

Transgressive and negotiated White racial knowledge

Abstract

This critical case study investigated the experiences of six White preservice teachers as they learned about race and racism during the first semester of an urban-focused teacher preparation program. The author identified two broad themes of transgressive White racial knowledge and negotiated White racial knowledge to capture the participants’ engagement with the topic of race. By detailing the complexities of the racial knowledge of a group of race-conscious White teachers, the project helps to de-homogenize conceptualizations of White teachers’ racial identities. The transgressive knowledge displayed by the participants largely occurred in their intellectual understandings of issues related to urban education. When the participants discussed their antiracist practice and their own complicity in racism, their negotiations with critical understandings of race emerged. These findings suggest that educators working with race-conscious White teachers should emphasize the messiness inherent in enacting an antiracist practice and think differently about the subtle distancing strategies White teachers often deploy to release themselves from complicity in racism.     

From trust to control – the Swedish first teacher reform

In this study, the implementation of the Swedish first teacher reform, where especially skilled teachers get an opportunity to advance in their careers, is examined. The scene is an upper secondary school, Baxter High, in the southwest of Sweden. In this particular school, a new system with first teachers replaces an old system of so-called head teachers. The teachers’ response to this is multilayered: at the same time as it reveals an unwillingness to change everyday work rhythms, it is also a response to cultural change, and to change in the discourse of political life in Baxter High. The implementation of the first teacher reform results not only in a change in administrative categories, but also in a change in ideology, intertwined with and embedded in the cultural and social life of the school. In this article, the authors connect the first teacher reform to the neoliberal transformation process that the Swedish educational system has undergone over the last three decades.     

A scientific approach in the assessment of the school-based part of the teacher education programme in Sweden

This article aims to highlight how a scientific and critical approach is used in assessment dialogues during the last period of a practical, school-based teacher education programme. The result is based on 13 assessment dialogues conducted in a course at a Swedish university, where one of the course objectives is to, ‘in a scientific way, analyse teaching situations based on learning theories’. The assessment dialogues were analysed drawing from Bernstein’s concepts of ‘classification’, ‘framing’, ‘horizontal knowledge’ and ‘vertical knowledge’. The result shows that only in a minority of the assessment dialogues are students expected to use theory as an analytical tool and to critically examine their teaching practice. The theory is used in a more instrumental way to legitimize what is considered the ‘right way’ to teach. One conclusion is that the critical tradition of academia is seldom observed despite being clearly stated in the learning goals. The link between general academic knowledge and more school-based contextual knowledge is often missing or not made visible by the students or the teacher educators, and normative content is still clearly prominent.     

Ambivalent attitudes about teaching children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Drawing on attitude theories from social psychology, we conducted a survey of Australian pre-service (n = 327) and in-service (n = 127) teachers’ attitudes about teaching children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This paper reports a content analysis of beliefs, affect and behaviours towards teaching children with ADHD and quantitative analyses pertaining to attitudinal ambivalence – that is, where a teacher may simultaneously report negative and positive evaluations of teaching children with ADHD. While on average, overall or global attitudes were mildly positive for both cohorts, considerable ambivalence about teaching children with ADHD was commonly experienced. Participants reported ambivalent beliefs, affect and behaviours, as well as ambivalence between these attitude components. Paradoxically, participants who knew more about ADHD and held stronger positive global attitudes about teaching children with ADHD reported less ambivalent behaviours towards these children, but reported more ambivalent beliefs. The implications for teachers’ professional development and training are discussed.     

Agonistic democracy and passionate professional development in teacher-leaders

Politicians and policy-makers in education routinely proclaim the centrality of schools and teachers in sustaining and consolidating democracy and democratic society. This article offers an account of teachers engaged in research in their schools and classrooms, with peers and students, so as to highlight the democratic potential of this engagement. In order to do so, it draws on an agonistic account of democracy that is distinct from more familiar liberal or procedural versions. Such an account is characterised by an emphasis on the values of constitutive pluralism, robust contestation and enduring tragedy, where the latter entails recognition of the ineliminable nature of (political) conflict and the inevitability of loss in human life. The teachers involved in this research demonstrated capacities which, it is argued, reflect an agonistic democratic ethos, including: developing the confidence to assume intellectual leadership by asking questions and eliciting and engaging plural perspectives in relation to these questions; engagement in the cut and thrust of research without the expectation of finding any final or perfect solutions; and an acceptance of difference and disagreement as constitutive and constructive elements in rethinking areas of policy and practice. Developing and encouraging these capacities, it is argued, is important in an increasingly authoritarian policy context that threatens the vital links between democracy and education highlighted by Dewey a century ago.     

Troubling the discourse of teacher centrality: a comparative perspective

The belief in the central role of the teacher has a long and comparative history. This article aims to critically analyse the discourse of the centrality of the teacher by both historicising and problematising the ideas and practices associated with this discourse. First, the article describes the discourse as it was taken up during the twenty‐first century when the teacher was viewed as the linchpin to building universal education systems. The idea that the ‘master makes the school’ is examined and the policies that stemmed from this thinking (e.g., the establishment of formal teacher training, teacher testing and certification) are outlined. The contemporary manifestations of this discourse are then described to show how the pervasive belief in the central role of the teacher has influenced education policy reforms, which like teacher policy reforms in the nineteenth century operate to shape and regulate the profession. Further discursive effects are analysed including the de‐contextualisation of educational reform and the de‐professionalisation and de‐politicisation of teachers and their work. The relationship between effective schools research and the centrality of the teacher discourse is also considered within the contemporary moment. This comparative study refers to the discourse of the centrality of the teacher in Australasia, Europe, Great Britain and North America, and suggests that our collective focus on the teacher has had some serious, unexpected effects on teachers and the work they do.     

Ambivalence and the politics of knowledge: The struggle for change in German higher education

This article argues (a) that universities are profoundly ambivalent institutions; (b) that this ambivalence explains a great deal about their behavior that would otherwise remain inexplicable; (c) that one of the most striking manifestations of this ambivalence can be found in universities’ attitudes towards change; and (d) that this ambivalence has its roots in a fundamental tension in modern society about the university’s purposes. There is good reason to believe that this set of observations holds true for universities everywhere, albeit to different degrees and in different ways. As a case in point, this article focuses on the process of change (and non-change) in German higher education over the past ten years.     

Enablers and barriers to Educational Psychologists’ use of therapeutic interventions in an Irish context

Recent years have seen a revived interest in therapeutic educational psychology practice. The aim of this research is to identify the range of therapeutic approaches being delivered by Educational Psychologists (EPs) in an Irish context and to elicit the views of practitioners on the facilitators and barriers to therapeutic provision. Twelve participants were recruited from a total of 22 EPs working within one region of the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS). Individual semi-structured interviews were held, and thematic analysis was used to examine the data gathered. Therapeutic approaches most commonly used by participants were Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT). Barriers perceived by EPs as impacting therapeutic practice related to time, government policy, school factors, EP role, and training. Facilitators included service support, intervention outcomes and media interest. Findings suggest that many EPs are applying therapeutic approaches and are keen to provide more within their professional role.     

Teacher education in France under the Hollande government: reconstructing and reinforcing the republic

Successive republican governments in France have constructed a complex educational context, which is rhetorically committed to a myth of provision of educational equality of opportunity whilst in practical terms it is characterised by a system focused on the production and reproduction of elites. This article aims to consider the political drivers and levers that are transforming French teacher education during the current challenging economic, social and cultural context. It uses a relatively new methodological approach to the analysis of policy evolution and development by applying a critical analysis of discourse, which considers the ways in which teacher education policy is ‘reproduced and reworked’. This is achieved through the discourse analysis of a policy speech made in October 2013 by the then Minister of Education, Vincent Peillon, contextualised by comparisons with reforms enacted by the previous Sarkozy government (masterisation). The article, therefore, utilises a systematic framework that allows analysis at the levels of contextualisation and deconstruction of the text and so highlights developments to date in the arguably unique approach of the Hollande government, driven by the relationship between the republican state and the education system in France. The article also considers how reaction following the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015 afforded opportunities to assert new validity for the teacher education policy espoused within Peillon’s speech.     

Tensions in equity- and reform-oriented learning in teachers' collaborative conversations

This paper explores how teachers' collaborative conversations afford and constrain their learning opportunities, through the close analysis of an interaction between equity-oriented mathematics teachers who were working together. The analysis reveals that although the group seemed like an ideal professional learning community in many ways, the teachers were frequently caught in tensions between restrictive and inclusive discourses about mathematical competence. The existence of these tensions presented opportunities for the teachers to learn, but teachers' framings of their own collaborative work stifled these opportunities. This paper contributes to understanding the challenges of equity- and reform-oriented learning in teachers' professional communities.     

Moving mountains stone by stone: Reforming rural education in China

The widely reported economic divide between the richer eastern provinces and the poorer western provinces in China has an exact parallel in the development of basic education. As a result of geographical, historical and social factors the quality and management of the education system lags considerably behind the east coast.     

Does educational development matter?

This essay provides reflections on the growth and influence of educational development, and the changes in approaches to teaching in universities. It also identifies some areas in which educational development and developers face challenges for the future, including educational technology, leadership and resistance to change.     

Competence-based teacher education: Illusion or reality? An assessment of the implementation status in Flanders from teachers’ and students’ points of view

Since 1998, the Flanders’ educational government in Belgium has been urging teacher education institutions by decree to implement competences in teacher training programs. Since then, years have gone by, and institutions have acted in order to achieve the competence-based goals. However, have they succeeded in implementing them? This is the research question that is central to the current study. An online survey inquiry was set up in eight elementary teacher education institutions using two questionnaires; one for final year elementary institution pre-service teachers, who were about to graduate at the time of completing the questionnaire (N = 218), the other for teacher trainers throughout the elementary teacher training program (N = 51). Ten years after the decree was issued, results show that competence-based education has become a reality in terms of its implementation. However, the process has not yet come to an end. Whereas some competences are clearly present in the institutions’ policies and practices (e.g. teacher as guide to learning and development, teacher as subject expert), others are poorly represented (e.g. teacher as partner of parents, external parties and as a member of the educational community). Moreover, teacher trainers tend to take four different approaches to the implementation of competences (1) during internship, (2) through the institution’s policy and program planning, (3) by means of their integration in both theoretical and practical components of the curriculum and finally, (4) a lack of implementation because the competences are considered insufficiently applicable by the teacher trainers. In particular, more experienced and subject expert teacher trainers tend to adopt the final approach more often than do younger colleagues and pedagogues. Student teachers’ results, on the other hand, suggest important differences between institutions concerning their understanding of competences and the integration of these competences in the curriculum; suggesting different paces of adaptation between teacher education institutions. Moreover, even within schools, the trajectory towards implementation is not always clear for all members of the teaching team, nor for the students of most teacher education institutions. Consequently, there is still important work to be done in order for successful competence-based change to occur.     

The teacher as reflexive professional: making visible the excluded discourse in teacher standards

In the current climate of accountability, political manoeuvring, changing curriculum, increasingly diverse student cohorts and community expectations, teachers, more than ever, need to develop the skills and abilities to be reflective and reflexive practitioners. This study examines national teacher professional standards from Australia and the UK to identify the extent to which reflexivity is embedded in key policy documents that are intended to guide the work of teachers in those countries. Using Margaret Archer's theories of reflexivity and morphogenesis, and methods of critical discourse analysis, we argue that these blueprints for teachers’ work exclude reflexivity as an essential and overarching discourse of teacher professionalism.