Educational change and new cleavages between head teachers,teachers and parents: global and local perspectives on the French case

This article combines a global, national and local perspective to study the effects if educational changes over the last 20 years on the relationship between head teachers, teachers and parents in France. Five kinds of transformations - decentralization, marketization, accountability, managerialism and professionalization - are examined in terms of their impact on definitions of the social and professional identities of educational agents and on the redistribution of power among them. The first section of the paper examines main shifts in policy and practice that these transformations were designed to produce from the perspective of policy-makers. The second section analyses the interaction between these global discourses and transformations of French educational models and realities at the level of the nation state. The third section shows how reform projects interact in very different ways with school realities in two contrasting local settings.     

Multiple perspectives for the study of teaching: Knowledge,reason, understanding,and being

This study analyzes the participation of secondary school teachers in a U.S. science education curriculum reform effort. All participating teachers agreed to implement the curriculum in their classrooms; however, the level at which it was implemented varied significantly among teachers. This article reviews the available perspectives used to account for the behavior of these teachers—reliance on a knowledge base, practical reasoning and reflective practice, and sociocultural views—and argues they are incomplete. A fourth perspective is developed in which teaching is viewed as a way of being and teachers as meaning makers immersed in educational situations. The remainder of the article is a cross‐case analysis of two teachers' use of the curriculum as seen from each of these perspectives on teaching. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 1032–1055, 2002     

Gender ‘matters’ in the primary classroom: Pupils' and teachers' perspectives

A recent project involving Year 3 (seven–eight year‐old) pupils and their teachers revealed that ‘gender matters’ differently to boys and girls, and teachers. The study sought to elicit whether pupils and their teachers felt the gender of a teacher mattered to their experiences of schooling. Pupils were concerned about how effective teachers were in carrying out their professional functions and a teacher's gender was subsumed within this. For these pupils, ‘gender mattered’ in terms of the construction of their own gender identities. In contrast, teachers were aware of and attentive to the gender of pupils in managing and organising classroom interactions. The variety of differing views expressed and positions adopted towards the place of gender in teacher–pupil interactions demonstrates the complexity of developing ‘one size fits all’ approaches to tackling gender equity in the classroom.     

Adaptation in the transition to school: perspectives of parents,preschool and primary school teachers

Background: Transition to school is a highly demanding phase at an intellectual, social and emotional level and is, therefore, an opportunity for growth and development. Despite the greater emphasis given to school transition in Portugal over recent years, namely by means of new educational policies, studies on the adaptation processes involved in the transition to primary school are still scarce.

Purpose: The present qualitative study sets out to contribute to the knowledge on the adaptation process of children to school transition (around age 6) in Portugal, by comparing preschool teachers’, primary school teachers’, and parents’ perceptions about success indicators and relevant factors in the transition to school.

Design and method: In order to collect data, 14 focus group interviews with different participants were conducted, three with preschool teachers (N = 18), three with primary school teachers (N = 13), four with parents conducted before the child’s transition to primary school (N = 14) and four with parents conducted after the child’s transition to primary school (N = 20).

Results: While the preschool and primary school teachers stressed factors of a family nature, such as parental involvement and parental support of children, the parents referred more frequently to the overall running of the school and the characteristics and methodology of the teacher as being relevant to the adaptation process in the first year of primary education.

Conclusions: The findings suggest different factors associated with adaptation to school and also offer clues for designing strategies to facilitate such adaptation. New strategies are needed to facilitate the construction of a robust educational family–school partnership.     

教师公正研究:成果、反思及展望

教师公正的研究已引起广大研究者的关注。现有研究成果主要涉及教师公正的内涵、特征、价值、表现、原则、影响因素、提升对策等几个方面。但是相关研究也存在概念不统一、研究方法单一、重理论轻实践、研究对象窄化等问题。对其研究进行梳理和反思,以期促进该研究的深入发展。     

Professional aspirations among pre-service teachers: personal responsibility,time perspectives,and career choice satisfaction

Exploring the direct and indirect effects of pre-service teachers’ sense of personal responsibility on their professional aspirations through affective (i.e., career choice satisfaction) and cognitive (i.e., time perspectives) variables may enable teacher educators and policy makers to better describe the factors influencing teacher development in an era of teacher accountability. Indeed, current teacher accountability movements rather neglect the ‘teacher’ as a person who has professional aspirations, a sense of personal responsibility, career choice satisfaction and time perspectives within which these professional aspirations are contextualized and/or interpreted/reinterpreted. This indicates that it is important to consider pre-service teachers’ professional intentions together with their sense of responsibility, professional satisfaction, and time perspectives in order to inform current accountability movements more comprehensively. Thus, the current study examined whether pre-service teachers’ sense of personal responsibility, time perspectives, and career choice satisfaction were significantly related to their professional aspirations, with a particular focus on the mediating roles of their time perspectives and career choice satisfaction. A total of 511 pre-service teachers voluntarily participated in the study. Correlation, multiple regression, and structural equation modeling analyses were conducted in order to analyze the data in a comprehensive manner. The results showed that aspects of pre-service teachers’ sense of personal responsibility were significantly and positively related to their professional aspirations, career choice satisfaction, and future time perspective. The results also showed that career choice satisfaction and future time perspective played significant mediating roles in the relationships between personal responsibility and professional aspirations. Notably, the mediating role of career choice satisfaction was stronger than that of the mediating role of future time perspective. Overall, the results of the study reveal that the correlational patterns, derived from the links between pre-service teachers’ sense of personal responsibility, career choice satisfaction, future time perspective, and professional aspirations, have clear potential to inform teacher educators and policy makers regarding the factors influencing pre-service teachers’ engagement with the teaching profession and professional development aspirations.     

Teachers working together: A dialogue on organizational and cultural perspectives of Chinese teachers

This chapter is a dialogue between two scholars — one Chinese and one North American. Each from her own perspective draws on field research and professional experience to analyze practices of teacher collaboration in China. The chapter considers how Chinese teachers work together as a matter of both formal organization and informal relations. The underlying cultural assumptions which support these practices are also discussed. Much of what is perceived to be dichotomous in the West (such as group vs. individual, hierarchy vs. equality, and control vs. commitment) is perceived to be reconciled within the complex historical, cultural, and political patterns which embed Chinese thinking and practice.     

Action research remodelled in a competitive,profit-oriented sector: teachers’ and managers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

Action research has enjoyed phenomenal growth in the field of education as a catalyst for teacher professional learning with a view to school improvement, but it is commonly remodelled across various local settings. Adopting a Schatzkian perspective, this study investigates the experiences of a range of teachers engaging in an action research program in a competitive, profit-oriented setting – the English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS) sector in Australia – to explore how action research has been prefigured and remodelled in this unique context. A qualitative case study approach was adopted and a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers and managers of ELICOS centres. Results of this study indicate that the way action research is understood and practised by teachers and managers in the ELICOS sector has been shaped by the competitive, profit-oriented context in which they function, with an emphasis on ‘winning’ and gaining status through action research.     

Keeping track of expert teachers: Comparing the affordances of think-aloud elicited by two different video perspectives

Verbal data from think-aloud is uniquely unobtrusive and non-reactive. It can therefore generate real-time insight into how expert teachers think. Our paper analyses data from two video-stimulated retrospective think-aloud approaches. The first approach used videos of others' teaching as stimuli for participating teachers' think-aloud. The second approach involved the teachers' own-perspective videos, overlaid with the teachers' own gaze patterns that were simultaneously recorded. In all, the study sets out to investigate how these two approaches differ with regard to their respective potential for uncovering expert teacher cognition. Others' videos elicited more think-aloud responses than gaze-cued own-perspective videos, especially the operational aspects of classroom teaching. Interaction analysis revealed expert–novice differences to vanish when only think-aloud responses to gaze-cued own-perspective videos were considered. Classroom relationships might be integral for any teacher's navigation of classroom instruction, regardless of expertise.     

基于发展需求与外部支持的农村教师专业发展调查研究

本文以教师专业发展需求及外部支持为切入点,通过对河南省、江西省和安徽省2552名农村中小学教师的调查发现目前农村教师专业发展的主要问题有:专业发展留于经验,合作探究氛围不浓;教育理论知识匮乏,培训忽视受训者差异;外在支持形式单一,经费投入不足.因此,农村中小学教师专业发展应注重:提升教师专业自主意识及能力,充分利用校本优势;增加培训的针对性,培训类型多样化;完善农村教师培训制度,加大投入力度.     

Black on black education 2.0: critical race perspectives on personally engaged pedagogy for/by black pre-service teachers

ABSTRACT

Public schools have increasing numbers of its teachers fitting into one demographic, white and female, while the numbers of Black/African American teachers decrease. This trend has not changed since the publication of Black on Black Education: Personally Engaged Pedagogy for/by African American Pre-Service Teachers. Furthermore, African American collegiate students who decide to enter teaching may face a chilly climate because of their cultural and educational experiences as they encounter devaluation in the classroom. This work provides a critical race reflective examination into the teaching and learning experiences and dilemmasI using personally engaged pedagogy as a means of enhancing the quality of the learning experiences for African American pre-service teachers. Critical race theory (CRT) and Critical Race Feminism (CRF) will be used as the theoretical framework for understanding the role of race and gender in teacher education. Critical autoethnography is the methodological approach used to examine the subject phenomenon. Field notes, research journaling, and student memoirs provide data for this critical autoethnography. This work highlights the significance of CRT/CRF’s unique voice of color and CRF’s multidimensionality to engaged pedagogy, creating a personally engaged pedagogy.     

On Collaboration: teachers,self‐assessment and professional journals

... educational reformers have responded to the crises in public education by primarily offering solutions that either ignore the roles of teachers in preparing learners to be active and critical citizens, or they suggest reforms that ignore the intelligence, judgement and experience that teachers might bring to bear. (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985, p. 23)     

不同的视角 不同的声音——教师和学生对大学本科课程的看法

本研究对北京大学本科课题进行了调查 ,调查结果表明 :教师和学生对大学本科课程的现状、问题、培养效果、公共选修课以及学生缺乏的课程领域等问题的看法存在较大差异。因此 ,大学本科课程改革不仅要注意自上而下的意见 ,还要倾听自下而上的声音     

New peace,new teachers: Student teachers' perspectives of diversity and community relations in Northern Ireland

This paper reflects upon student teachers' conceptions of inter-community relations and the preparation they receive to address issues of diversity and mutual understanding. The study in Northern Ireland is set against a backdrop of political, social and educational change, where a shared, peaceful future appears possible. Student teachers at a Catholic institution and a predominantly Protestant institution indicated a willingness to engage with issues concerning diversity and inter-community relations, despite having a limited knowledge of the concepts. However they also demonstrated clear views about the relevance and value of the preparation they received. The findings are evaluated using multicultural theory.     

The impact of treatment development process,intervention type,and problem severity on treatment acceptability as judged by classroom teachers

This study expands upon the treatment acceptability literature by investigating the impact of various processes through which interventions are developed. Specifically, teachers were presented with a case study and informed that the recommended treatments for the presenting problem were developed in one of three ways: (a) by a teacher and school psychologist collaborating with each other, (b) by a teacher alone, or (c) by a school psychologist alone. The type of treatment recommended (positive versus reductive) and the seriousness of the presenting problem (mild versus severe) were also investigated. Results indicated that teachers found interventions developed via a collaborative model to be more acceptable than those developed by either a teacher or a school psychologist working in isolation from each other. As has been reported in prior studies, positive interventions were found to be more acceptable than those that were reductive in nature. Unlike prior investigations, however, treatments recommended for severe problems were not found to be any more acceptable than those recommended for mild problems. Implications of the findings for service delivery and limitations of the study are discussed.