Using Narrative Inquiry to Understand a Student–Teacher's Practical Knowledge While Teaching in an Inner-City School

The present study uses narrative inquiry to follow, July, a preservice teacher's journey through her yearlong placement in an inner-city school. A qualitative analysis of four interviews, 12 written reflections, and seven transcribed group discussions revealed a sense of culture shock felt by Julie. In particular, her sense of conflict focused around self as she interacted with her mentoring teachers, her students, and coping with doubts about her own abilities and self-worth. Julie's story suggests clear ways of avoiding similar situations in the future and improving preservice teaching generally.     

Student Teacher Efficacy in Inner-City Schools

The resolution of five middle-class student teachers' conflict and growth toward efficacy during their year interning in an inner-city school is described in this qualitative study. Analysis of 4 interviews, 12 written reflections, and 7 transcribed group discussions revealed a sense of culture shock felt by interns upon entering the inner-city schools. In particular, their concerns focused on problems in the children's home lives. Aggravating their worries were the normal concerns of student teachers about getting along with their collaborating teachers and their students and coping with doubts about their own abilities and values. Growth in self-efficacy began as the interns attempted to manage problems and take risks.     

Two Preservice Teachers' Growth in Self-Efficacy While Teaching in an Inner-City School

Jillian and Mia, African-American preservice teachers, experienced culture shock when they student taught in an inner-city school. This was revealed by a qualitative analysis of 4 interviews, 12 written reflections, and 7 transcribed group discussions. Their self-efficacy grew stronger as they interacted with mentoring teachers and students and learned to cope with doubts about their abilities. As they worked through their conflicts, they changed the way they thought about teaching in the inner city and improved their personal and practical knowledge.     

Factors associated with school psychologists' perceptions of campus violence

Recent concern about school violence has increased demands on school psychologists to respond to safety concerns on their school campuses. In this study, 123 school psychologists responded to a survey about their perceptions, experiences, and readiness to meaningfully address school violence. School psychologists reported that they do not worry about their personal safety at school (78%), but most felt unprepared to deal with school violence (73%) and had received no specialized training in this area (85%). A principal components analysis of the types of violence school psychologists perceived to occur on their campuses identified a range of incidents from bullying to antisocial behavior. School psychologists working in inner-city schools were more likely to believe that their schools had high levels of violence (45.6%) compared with those working in urban-not inner-city (14.3%), suburban (4.9%), or rural (0%) schools. Recommendations to prepare school psychologists to help prevent, reduce, and respond to campus violence are discussed. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Teaching approaches which support inclusive education: a connective pedagogy

In this article, Jenny Corbett, a Reader in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, considers the factors which can help to support effective inclusive learning. She uses her reading of the growing body of literature on inclusion in order to reflect upon her own enquiries into practice at an inclusive primary school in London. Drawing upon the three key elements in the Index for Inclusion , she presents findings about school culture, school policy and school practice. Her conclusions will help policy-makers and practitioners to reflect upon the relationships between effectiveness and inclusivity.     

Shaun's Story: Troubling discourses of white working-class masculinities

This article tells the story of a hard-working, well-behaved, poor, white, working-class boy trying to achieve academically in a 'sink' inner-city boys' comprehensive school, whilst simultaneously trying to maintain his standing within the male peer group culture. In doing so, it raises questions about the possibilities of bringing together white working-class masculinities with educational success in inner-city working-class schooling. It is argued that to combine the two generates heavy psychic costs, involving young men not only in an enormous amount of academic labour but also an intolerable burden of psychic reparative work. Shaun's narrative also suggests that the problem of 'failing boys' cannot be solved through school-based initiatives. Until social processes of male gender socialisation move away from the imperative of privileging the masculine and allow boys to stay in touch with their feminine qualities, the problem of 'failing boys' will remain despite the best efforts of teachers and researchers.     

Hawthorne Elementary School: The University Perspective

This article reflects a faculty member's perspective of how Trinity University and Hawthome Elementary School planned and worked together to evolve into a successful partnership. Trinity's teacher education reform agenda focused on two goals: preparing future teachers for a full academic year in the real world of the elementary school and pursuing a teacher-selected school reform project. Both the Hawthorne culture and the inner-city professor's role as a teacher changed when we organized a shared vision and shared responsibility for teacher preparation and school reform.     

Students' attitudes to an inner-city environment

Conclusion In analysing the results of Tables 1–7, one is led to the conclusion that if environmental education is to have a significant impact in our schools, it has to have some educational relevance, that is, that it must fit into the real life context of the child. This study confirmed that children in an inner-city school had more positive attitudes about an inner-city environment than the outer suburban children who were more concerned with the aesthetically pleasing aspects of wilderness areas (Tables 1 and 7). It seems that the further the reference was from the respondents' immediate surroundings, the less reluctant the outer suburban students were to identify significant problems like pollution. Only by taking into consideration such basic information about each group of children — inner-city, outer suburban or rural — can environmental education programmes be planned so as to present to each group of students the most relevant and effective programme.     

Learning to be 'Tough': The fostering of maleness in one primary school

In recent years there has been an increase in studies on masculinity and schooling. The focus has largely been upon boys' experiences of secondary schooling and how schools actively produce a range of masculinities. This paper explores the interrelationship between masculinity, primary schools and the local community and culture. The data is drawn from a year-long ethnographic study of an inner-city primary school in the north-east of England.     

Relevant Training for Relevant Roles: A Model for Educating Inner-City Counselors

The inner-city counselor is expected to enter into his role with an understanding of his students and their culture, as well as with a knowledge of the processes of social change and his own potential contribution. Present programs of counselor education do not tend to provide the basis for development of these wide-ranging skills. It is suggested that counselor education should place potential counselors in public school settings working in teams with practicing counselors, providing relevant experience for future counselors and invigorating contacts for future supervisors. Course work would be inter-disciplinary and provided in the public school milieu.     

Caught between cultures: case study of an “out of school” ethnic minority student in Hong Kong

This paper reports a case study on Maneesha Rai, a Nepalese girl living in Hong Kong and an “out of school” student. Based on in-depth interviews, a case was constructed of her previous school days and current “out of school” days. These provided a vivid picture of her life and several themes were created using schema analysis that help explain the reasons for her “dropping out” of school after Form Five. It has been common to attribute school failure for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong to problems with Chinese language education. Yet Maneesha’s case study shows that her experience of failure in other subjects such as Mathematics and Science contributed to her lack of successful schooling. Maneesha’s school failure was more than simply a consequence of academic failure. Rather, there were many other interrelated factors such as peer and community factors, dropout history in the family, racism, differences in schooling culture found that contributed to her school failure. In addition, Maneesha, like many of her ethnic minority friends, enjoyed the freedom afforded her in Hong Kong, but it seemed such freedom also meant inadequate attention from her teachers.     

The induction year experience in a cross-cultural setting

A new teacher's first year in the classroom is when he or she begins to establish a professional identity, to negotiate a place in the school as well as the classroom. It is a continuation of the acculturation process begun in practice teaching to a new culture, the culture of the school. In Canada, many newly graduated teachers are faced with an even more demanding acculturation task. A sizeable number find themselves hired by an Aboriginal school board and transported to a new community culture, often with neither formal training nor informal experience of Aboriginal cultures. To date, no studies of this acculturation to both school and community cultures and the impact it may have on the beliefs and practices of beginning teachers have been reported in the literature. This case study documents the experiences of a first-year teacher in a small Aboriginal community, describing the ways in which she developed and modified her beliefs about teaching in order to create a sense of self-efficacy in the cross-cultural classroom.     

Implementing School Restructuring in the Inner City

The purpose of this research was to examine school reform at a local level. Our analysis centered on the impact that the Accelerated Schools model had on two inner-city elementary schools in New Orleans. Key to our interpretation was addressing prevalent social issues, including poverty, racism, and single-parent families, embedded in everyday life in urban communities. The findings illuminate the need to resolve racial, social, and ideological conflicts for school change to take root in inner-city schools.     

Exploring the Collaborative Ethic in an Urban School: A Case Study

A case study is presented of a project designed to establish a collaborative consultation ethic in an inner-city elementary school serving a culturally diverse student population. The story that is told describes the collaborative culture of the school as well as the evolution of a school-based university course in collaborative consultation. Lessons learned from this project include the realities of schools in need of change; the ability to promote a collaborative ethic in schools lacking administrative and collegial support; the usefulness of a qualitative case study approach in understanding and providing information to adjust an ongoing collaborative endeavor and the value of conducting a university course on collaborative consultation using authentic content-that is, content identified by participants to which collaborative problem-solving processes are applied.     

Teaching about Cuba: The concientization of a US teacher-researcher

In this paper the author offers a reflective perspective of her experiences while conducting research in Cuba in 1995 and 1996, and upon her return to the United States, teaching Cuban culture and history in a public school. In particular, she discusses the challenges surrounding her positioning, location, and accountability as author, researcher, teacher, and comparative educator. She explores the interaction of cultural identities faced as a researcher from the United States and the ideologically charged ironies that teaching Cuban history and culture evoke in an American middle school. Moreover, she chronicles her shifting perceptions of cultural identity and interfacing with the opposing responses between suspicion and acceptance in both countries. While negotiating between these two cultures, the repositioning on the continuum of critical pedagogy offers insight into the problems inherent in these situations.     

Theorising geo-identity and David Harvey’s space: school choices of the geographically bound middle-class

This paper draws on David Harvey’s theories of absolute and relational space in order to critique geographically bound school choices of the gentrified middle-class in the City of Melbourne, Australia. The paper relies on interviews with inner-city school choosers as generated by a longitudinal ethnographic school choice study. I argue that the participants construct their class-identity in relation to their geographical (or residential) positioning and this influences their schooling choices. In the light of this argument, I theorise geo-identity in thinking about how geographies inform and instruct identity and choice. This paper contributes by offering a focused analysis of Harvey’s spatial theories and class-identity in processes of choice.     

‘It's almost like a White school now’: racialised complexities,Indigenous representation and school leadership

Drawing on a broader study that focused on examining principal leadership for equity and diversity, this paper presents the leadership experiences of ‘Jane’, a White, middle-class principal of a rural Indigenous school. The paper highlights how Jane's leadership is inextricably shaped by her assumptions about race and the political dynamics and historical specificities of her school community. A central focus is on Jane's tendency to deploy culturally reductionist understandings of Indigeneity that position it as incompatible or incommensurable with White culture/western schooling. The paper argues the central imperative of a leadership that rejects these understandings and engages in a critical situational analysis of Indigenous politics, relations and experience. Such an analysis is presented as imperative to supporting representative justice in that it moves beyond merely according a voice to Indigenous people to a focus on better understanding, problematising and remedying the racial relations that contribute to Indigenous oppression.     

‘Education comes second to surviving’: parental perspectives on their child/ren’s early school leaving in an area challenged by marginalisation

This paper examines early school leaving from the perspective of parents of early school leavers in an inner-city local authority housing estate in the Republic of Ireland living with the challenges of significant marginalisation. While the vast majority of post-primary pupils now sit a Leaving Certificate examination, and improvements in school retention rates have also been found in ‘disadvantaged’ schools in recent years, a disproportionate number of those leaving school early come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Through in-depth, semi-structured, interviews, this qualitative study examined the perspectives of nine parents of early school leavers about the factors contributing to young people from this area leaving school early. This article focuses on three aspects of the findings through which the parent participants framed their views on early school leaving; (1) feeling let down by school, and (2) being stigmatised being from a ‘disadvantaged’ area, and (3) dealing with life traumas. For the participants, these factors significantly constrained their child/ren in engaging with education. The findings are examined through an interrogation of the shaping impact of social class and ‘place’. Recommendations include specific professional development for educators in challenging contexts about the impact of trauma and socio-demographical positionality on educational engagement and outcomes.     

解析《刮痧》中的文化冲突与调和

以阴阳概念为代表的中国传统文化遭遇西方文化时就会产生文化冲击。文化冲击是一种文化失落与文化失衡现象。文章从文化冲击的特点入手,以影片《刮痧》为例,从两个方面进行阐释:中西思维方式上的不同和中西方对待科学研究客体的差异。最后指出,异质文化中人们的沟通和理解会帮助人们减少因文化冲击而带来的震撼。     

Desirable places: spatial representations and educational strategies in the inner city

This article examines how the outcome of neoliberal educational reforms has affected urban schooling in the inner city of Stockholm – making it into a centralized nexus or a ‘hot-spot’ for students and schools. The aim is to analyse how geographical place and space have become major distinctive criteria in inner-city students’ educational strategies, as well as a comparative advantage for upper-secondary schools in the fierce in-between school competition. The data consist of interviews with close to 120 participants, official statistics and marketing from 55 inner-city upper-secondary schools. Our findings suggest that the growing commodification and upward socio-spatial homogenization of the inner city both affect the way schools use spatial representations in their marketing and also the strategies deployed by students in their school choice.