Teachers’ capacities to meet students’ additional support needs in mainstream primary education

Mainstream primary school teachers generally acknowledge the need to implement adaptive teaching; however, meeting a variety of students’ needs is a challenge. Studies have addressed the conditions under which teachers attribute their (in)capacities, but these have mainly involved vignettes. Therefore, it remains unknown whether teachers are capable of meeting their own students’ needs and what is of help or hindrance to them. The current study drawn from survey data obtained from 108 Dutch teachers addresses teacher-perceived (in)capacities to meet their students’ needs and perceived sources of help or hindrance in meeting them. Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs were expected to partly explain teachers’ capacity. Results show that teachers feel fairly adequate in meeting students’ needs. They discern four sources of help or hindrance to which teachers attribute their success, including the teacher him/herself, student characteristics and school/working conditions. Attributions at the teacher and school levels were mostly related to teacher-perceived capacities rather than to teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs.     

Teachers’ perceptions of their matched students

The purpose of the study was to investigate FD and FI teachers’ perceptions of their ‘matched’ students. The Group Embedded Figures Test was administered as a measure of cognitive style to four middle school teachers and 144 seventh and eighth grade students. The teachers rated their students on a five-point scale in relation to (1) the degree they liked the student, (2) the information they knew about the student, (3) the concern they had for the student, and (4) their rejection of the student. FI teachers were more positive of their matched students (FI) than were FD teachers.     

Real school improvement: is it in the eye of the beholder?

The outcomes of a school improvement programme were measured in 26 primary schools over one year. Authorised pupil and staff absences and staff turnover decreased, and unauthorised pupil absences significantly increased (p < 0.05). Fixed-term exclusions significantly decreased (p < 0.001). The self-esteem of 316 pupils aged between 4 and 11 before and after programme implementation showed a significant increase (p < 0.001). Staff self-esteem also increased significantly (p < 0.05) and provided a significant indicator of programme sustainability (p < 0.05). Thematic analysis of data from staff interviews demonstrated that the effectiveness of school improvement programmes rested on staff participation in terms of capacity, perceptions of change and stability of the school before programme implementation. These elements were incorporated into a model of school improvement. Goal Attainment Scores were significantly correlated with fidelity of programme participation (p < 0.05). Feedback indicated that there was more to school improvement programmes than simply buying one “off the shelf.”     

In the eyes of the beholder: students’ and teachers’ judgments of students’ motivation

This study was designed to examine the nature and accuracy of teachers’ judgments about students’ motivation related to mathematics. Seventeen fourth- through sixth-grade teachers and 100 of their students participated in this study. Teachers were asked to rate six target students’ motivation four times during the school year. At each of these times students also rated their own motivation. Teachers’ ratings were more stable over time and across mathematics topics and were less differentiated across motivation dimensions than were students’ ratings. The findings suggest that teachers need to pay careful attention to evidence related to children's motivation that might contradict their perceptions and therefore support more effective interventions.     

Broadening communication yet holding back: Teachers’ perceptions of their relationship with students in the SNS-era

Teacher-student relationship is vital for students’ academic, emotional and social development, as well as for teachers’ professional and personal development. This quantitative study examines teacher-student communication and relationship on Facebook among secondary school teachers (N = 180). We examined teachers’ attitudes towards: a) a policy that bans teacher-student Facebook connections; b) using Facebook for learning. Overall, teachers were interested in broadening communication channels with students, in order to empower learning and interpersonal relationship. However, teachers also maintain traditional teacher-student differentiation; they approve using Facebook for learning and disagree with a banning policy, but also prefer using a professional profile for interacting with their students. Data regarding teachers’ perceptions of relationship with their students and SNS-mediated communication present issues regarding means of communication, attitudes towards the policy of banning SNS, standpoints on using Facebook for learning, and preferred profile for communicating with students. We discuss these issues in light of academic, pedagogical, and inter-personal implications.     

Teachers’ first year in the profession: the power of high-quality support

ABSTRACT

In research on teacher induction, scholars have pointed at the pivotal role of collegial support to overcome the challenges inherent to the first years of teaching. In this quantitative study, we extend current work by using a social network perspective to examine characteristics (i.e. network size, frequency and perceived usefulness) of professional, emotional, and social collegial support networks. Moreover, we explore the extent to which these characteristics explain key factors affecting teacher retention, namely job satisfaction, intrinsic motivation to teach, and self-efficacy. An online survey was completed by 292 beginning primary school teachers in Flanders (Belgium). Social network data showed that, on average, they receive professional, emotional and social support from six colleagues each week and found this mostly useful. Regression analyses demonstrated that network size and perceived usefulness of professional, emotional, and social collegial support networks were positively related to job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation to teach, thus confirming the importance of collegial support in teacher induction. Frequency of support was not significant. Finally, no substantial relationship was found between collegial support and teachers’ self-efficacy. Implications of these findings for practice and policy are discussed.     

Teachers’ understanding of racial inequity predicts their perceptions of students’ behaviors

Teachers’ racialized interpretations of students’ behaviors likely lead to the racial disparities found in discipline across all education levels (Skiba et al., 2011). To explore how four types of teachers’ racial inequity beliefs (i.e., post-racial, American Dream, cultural deficit, schooling inequity) may be associated with teachers’ racialized interpretations of Black and White boys’ behaviors (i.e., hostility, emotionality, behavioral stability, and seriousness), a sample of 228 teachers in the United States filled out the Racism and Inequity Beliefs (RIB) Questionnaire and observed videotapes of six boys potentially misbehaving in school. Teachers’ cultural deficit beliefs uniquely predicted teachers’ negative perceptions of Black boys’ behaviors, with little to no impact on their perceptions of White boys’ behaviors. Specifically, teachers holding more cultural deficit beliefs perceived the Black boys’ behaviors as relatively more hostile, more representative of a behavioral pattern, and more serious compared to teachers who held fewer cultural deficit beliefs, and compared to their judgments of White boys’ behaviors. American Dream beliefs were also uniquely associated with assessments of Black boys’ behavior as more serious, without impact on White boys’ behavior. These results suggest the application of inequitable judgments of boys’ behaviors based on teachers’ racial inequity beliefs and boys’ identifiable race.     

Teachers use of writing to support students’ learning in middle school: A national survey in the United States

A random sample of middle school teachers (grades 6–9) from across the United States was surveyed about their use of writing to support students’ learning. The selection process was stratified so there were an equal number of English language arts, social studies, and science teachers. More than one-half of the teachers reported applying 15 or more writing to learn strategies at least once a month or more often. The most commonly used writing to learn strategies were writing short answers to questions, note taking for reading, note taking while listening, and completing worksheets. While teachers reported using a variety of writing to learn strategies, most of them indicated they received minimal or no formal preparation in college on how to use writing to learn strategies to support student learning, less than one-half of teachers directly taught students how to use the writing to learn strategies commonly assigned, and the most commonly used writing to learn strategies did not require students to think deeply about the material they were learning. We further found that teachers’ reported use of writing to learn strategies was related to their preparedness and the composition of their classroom in terms of above and below average writers, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities.     

Teachers’ perceptions of the inclusion of marginalised groups

This paper is based on the concept of inclusion as a process of recognising and minimising the barriers to learning and participation of all children, with teachers as the key players in implementing inclusion in practice. There are two key questions: (1) How do teachers rank different groups of marginalised children? (2) How do teachers see their own role, the role of the marginalised and other children, and their parents in the inclusion process? The groups included in the research were children with special needs, migrants from former Yugoslavia, Roma/Gypsies and children from poor families. In the latter group, it also looked at their counterparts, the children of wealthy parents. Research carried out on a representative sample of primary school teachers in Slovenia showed that children with special needs are among all surveyed groups of children those seen as the most helpless. For these children, teachers are also most likely to lower learning and discipline standards, while at the same time feeling the least qualified to teach them and seeing them also as having the lowest abilities. In the teachers’ opinion, parents of other children have the greatest reservations when their child associates with a Roma/Gypsy child, and teachers also put the least trust in Roma/Gypsy parents.     

Emergency management students’ perceptions of the use of WebEOC® to support authentic learning

This study investigates the use of software technology that is used by emergency management professionals to create an authentic learning environment in emergency and disaster management courses in the classroom. Participants were 235 upper-level students enrolled in residential and online emergency and disaster management courses at a mid-sized public university in the southeastern USA. Students participated in simulated disaster exercises that were presented through the software; further, as part of the exercise, students used the software to respond to the simulated disaster. Students then completed a survey to assess their perceptions of whether the exercises and software created an authentic learning environment and enhanced learning.     

Deaf and hard of hearing students’ perceptions of campus administrative support

Most students with hearing loss attend community college, yet very little research on this population of students exists in higher education. This research was conducted in order to gain a better understanding of how students who are d/Deaf navigate the mainstream postsecondary environment. Purposeful sampling was used to gather data from 19 individuals who attended postsecondary institutions not designed specifically for d/Deaf students. These participants were enrolled in an urban community college district in the southwestern United States and were receiving accommodations from their campus accessibility office.

Participants shared their perceptions of the campus accessibility office, the individuals within it, and campus administrative support. The results from this study help shed light on the experience of d/Deaf students in community college and provide insight on how to facilitate their success in postsecondary education. The author provides recommended practices for campus accessibility offices to adopt in order to effectively serve this student population, including specialized orientation for students and instructors, specialized advising, utilization of student feedback, and increasing campus and community awareness of services offered.     

Truth is in the eye of the beholder: Perception of the Müller-Lyer illusion in dogs

Visual illusions are objects that are made up of elements that are arranged in such a way as to result in erroneous perception of the objects’ physical properties. Visual illusions are used to study visual perception in humans and nonhuman animals, since they provide insight into the psychological and cognitive processes underlying the perceptual system. In a set of three experiments, we examined whether dogs were able to learn a relational discrimination and to perceive the Müller-Lyer illusion. In Experiment 1, dogs were trained to discriminate line lengths using a two-alternative forced choice procedure on a touchscreen. Upon learning the discrimination, dogs’ generalization to novel exemplars and the threshold of their abilities were tested. In the second experiment, dogs were presented with the Müller-Lyer illusion as test trials, alongside additional test trials that controlled for overall stimulus size. Dogs appeared to perceive the illusion; however, control trials revealed that they were using global size to solve the task. Experiment 3 presented modified stimuli that have been known to enhance perception of the illusion in other species. However, the dogs’ performance remained the same. These findings reveal evidence of relational learning in dogs. However, their failure to perceive the illusion emphasizes the importance of using a full array of control trials when examining these paradigms, and it suggests that visual acuity may play a crucial role in this perceptual phenomenon.     

In the eye of the beholder: Do adult students’ achievement goal orientation profiles predict their perceptions of instruction and studying?

The purpose of this study was to examine how adult students’ perceptions of their learning environment vary as a function of their achievement goal orientations. Study 1 (n = 196) reports the development of a questionnaire that focuses on aspects of instruction presumably linked to student motivation. In Study 2, students (n = 167) were classified into groups according to their goal orientation profiles, and then compared in terms of their evaluations of the learning environment and their relation to it. Students with different motivational profiles perceived the learning environment somewhat differently, with most differences reflecting the students’ view of their own role in studying. The findings will be discussed in terms of how personal and contextual factors contribute to the development of individuals’ motivation.     

Teachers’ organisational practices and their perceptions of the benefits of support by withdrawal for mathematics in Irish primary schools

This study was designed to ascertain the organisational practices of learning support teachers and their perceptions of the benefits, if any, of support by withdrawal for mathematics in Irish primary schools. The study reports on the views of a sample of 137 teachers who have postgraduate qualifications in learning support/special education from six designated centres for professional development in this area. As an organisational model for learning support in mathematics, small group/individual withdrawal was the most popular way in which additional support was organised, with 94% of the survey respondents in this study operating this system to some degree. Furthermore, key findings also highlighted that teachers perceived the following as advantages to out-of-class support: learning benefits; enhanced learning space; benefits for certain types of pupils; time benefits; positive contrast with mainstream class; assessment benefits; and greater use of concrete materials. In contrast, only 41% of teachers reported that they provide an in-class service for pupils and class teachers. Barriers to collaboration for in-class support are identified and teachers’ responses to these outlined. The study found large differences between teachers in the amount of support they provided to class teachers, the amount of non-contact time they had for planning and collaboration, and in the range of practices used to carve out time for collaboration. The implications of these findings are then discussed.     

Teachers’ estimates of their students’ motivation and engagement: being in synch with students

Being aware of, monitoring and responding constructively to students’ signals of motivation and to students’ signals of engagement represent two important teaching skills. We hypothesised, however, that teachers would better estimate their students’ engagement than they would estimate their students’ motivation. To test this hypothesis, Korean high-school teachers rated three aspects of motivation and four aspects of engagement for each student in their class, while students completed questionnaires to provide referent self-reports of these same aspects of their motivation and engagement. Multi-level analyses showed that, after statistically controlling for the potentially confounding information of student achievement, teachers’ engagement estimates corresponded significantly to their students’ self-reports while their motivation estimate did not. These findings validate teachers’ skill in inferring their students’ classroom engagement and lead to the recommendation that teachers monitor classroom engagement to be in synch with their students during instruction.     

Teachers’ perceptions of disruptive behaviour in schools: a psychological perspective

This article reports on an investigation into school teachers’ perceptions of disruptive behaviour from a psychological perspective. The inter-disciplinary nature of this research bridges the understanding between educational and psychological perspectives on disruptive behaviour. This article discusses evidence that for the most troubled pupils, effective behaviour management at school necessitates a more nurturing and collaborative approach alongside current disciplinary policy. Two studies are reported which examine teachers’ perceptions of disruptive behaviour at school. Discussion focuses on findings of a postal questionnaire sent to 426 primary and secondary schools across England, regarding teachers’ perceptions on the extent to which pupils can control their disruptive behaviour. A further 122 primary schools were sent the questionnaire via SurveyMonkey. The findings illustrate that there is variation in how teachers in primary and secondary schools regard their pupils’ behaviour. Implications of the findings are discussed with reference to attachment theory.     

Teachers’ assessment experiences and perceptions in the practical-aesthetic subjects

A challenge for the practical-aesthetic subjects is the perception that they are less important than theoretical knowledge subjects. These subjects are among the non-core subjects receiving highest grades in Norwegian lower secondary schools, but also represent the highest number of complaints about grading. This study investigates teachers’ experience and perceptions of assessment in the practical-aesthetic subjects, through the response to an open-ended questionnaire from 28 teachers, and individual semi-structured interviews with four of these teachers. Results suggest that teachers of the practical-aesthetic subjects promote low status for these subjects, through their teaching and assessment practice.     

Statutory assessment of the class? Supporting the additional needs of the learning context

The dialogue of this paper operates at two levels. First, it seeks to rethink the various perspectives on social justice evident in the academic literature, reviewing what is collectively known about it and where current thinking is taking and/or should be taking us. Second, it reports on research concerning the schooling of students with disabilities or, more accurately, research concerning the practices of teachers in relation to the inclusion of students with disabilities within ‘mainstream’ classrooms. These two discussions come together through their collaborative interest in recognizing social justice when they ‘see’ it; the data from the research are used to inform the theory it illustrates and the theory is used to explain teachers' practices. In this critical sense it is more than a dialogue, with its parts dialectically related. The paper's critique also extends to questioning whose interests are served (and whose are not) by various social justice perspectives and their applications to schooling. It concludes that ‘a critical theory of social justice must consider not only distributive patterns, but also the processes and relationships that produce and reproduce those patterns’ (Young 1990: 241).     

Teachers’ perceptions of school connectedness and risk-taking in adolescence

School connectedness has been shown to be an important protective factor in adolescent development, which is associated with reduced risk-taking behavior. Interventions to increase students’ connectedness to school commonly incorporate aspects of teacher training. To date, however, research on connectedness has largely been based on student survey data, with no reported research addressing teachers’ perceptions of students’ connectedness and its association with student behavior. This research attempted to address this gap in the literature through in-depth interviews with 14 school teachers and staff from two Australian high schools. Findings showed that teachers perceived students’ connectedness to be important in regard to reducing problem behavior, and discussed aspects of connectedness, including fairness and discipline, feeling valued, belonging and having teacher support, and being successfully engaged in school, as being particularly important. This research enables the development of school-based intervention programs that are based on both student- and teacher-focused research.