‘It’s not that easy to solve’: edTPA and preservice teacher learning

This three year qualitative study of a university pilot of the edTPA, a performance assessment for preservice teachers, questioned candidates’ learning at the nexus of claims that the edTPA serves a dual role as both a formative assessment for candidates’ ongoing learning as well as a summative assessment of their readiness to teach. The analysis highlighted affordances and constraints of the assessment in the areas of: (1) depth of professional learning, (2) differentiation for diverse learners, (3) focus on school, community and family context, (4) professional reflection within classroom realities, and (5) as an evaluation tool. The discussion positions the findings alongside other published implementation studies of the edTPA in terms of current reforms. It especially problematizes the positioning of preservice teachers as professional learners in light of pressures for compliance and standardization.     

Shopping :Men’s and Women’s

“M en say they hate to shop,”says Zhukin,C ity U niversity of N ewY ork Sociology (社会学) professor. “Y et w hen you ask them deeperquestions,it turns out that they like to shop.M en generally like to shopfor books, m usic and hardw are. But ifyou ask them aboutthe shoppingthey do for books or m usic, they ll say, ‘W ell, thats not shopping.Thats research.’”In other words,what m en and w om en call “buying things”and howthey com plete thattask are different.W om en will wander thr…     

Listen Up: What We Can Learn From Women’s Birth and Postpartum Experiences

In 2013, Childbirth Connection published findings from a U.S. study of women’s pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum experiences, Listening to Mothers III. In this issue of The Journal of Perinatal Education, we publish the major survey findings of both the pregnancy and birth survey and the postpartum survey. This editorial discusses some of the major findings of the childbirth survey. Listening to what mothers have to say about their experiences suggests a mandate to “listen up” to what mothers are telling us and continue to advocate for evidence-based maternity care. Articles in this issue of the journal are presented.     

Motivational and emotional components affecting male’s and female’s self-regulated learning

The relationship between self-referenced feelings and cognitions and self-regulated learning has become an important area of research. But to what extent can differences in self-regulation be explained by differences in motivation and emotion? And how facilitating or debilitating is the effect of motivation and emotion on the use of regulatory study activities? In this study, 292 freshmen were assessed on self-referenced cognitions and feelings. Three months later, regulatory study activities were measured by self-report. The canonical correlation between self-referenced cognitions and feelings and regulatory activities was very substantial (.52), and even invariant of ability differences. Task value and the tendency to achieve success were positively related to self-regulation for both males and females. An impressive gender difference was noticed, however, for the tendency to avoid failure. For female students, a high level of fear of failure acted as a detrimental agent upon regulatory activities. It is concluded that attention should be paid to facilitating and debilitating mechanisms underlying the use of metacognitive activities while being engaged in a cognitive endeavour.     

‘We are the ones that talk about difficult subjects’: nurses in schools working to support young people’s mental health

As health professionals in an educational setting, nurses in schools occupy a unique place in the spectrum of children’s services. Yet the service is often overlooked and has been described as invisible. This paper draws on findings from a study, funded by the Scottish Government’s National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Well‐being, which explored the role of school nurses in promoting and supporting the mental health of children and young people. The school nursing service throughout the United Kingdom is at a pivotal point as its role is being redefined to align with moves across the National Health Service towards a public health model. This paper therefore offers a timely overview of the mental health work of school nurses, and raises key issues for future work. Interviews were conducted with 25 school nurse managers across Scotland. Interviewees claimed that the contribution of nurses in schools was distinctive, owing to the quality and consistency of relationship that they could offer, and the autonomy that the service allowed young people. However, significant challenges were reported in making this contribution, and tensions were evident in the conceptualisation of their role. The framework of resilience is used to discuss the findings on the significance of building relationships in promoting mental health.     

Vygotsky’s ‘Thought and Word’

The last chapter of Vygotsky’s last book, Thinking and Speech, is a compressed argument about the construction of consciousness through the internalisation of language. This article comments on Vygotsky’s analysis of the ‘voyage into the interior’ undertaken by oral speech as it is internalised and abbreviated into ‘inner speech’, and then further concentrated as non-verbal thought. The article focuses on the part that literature and especially poetry play in Vygotsky’s argument in this chapter, and suggests that in exploring the condensed semantics of inner speech Vygotsky is implicitly describing how poets turn private thoughts into ‘symbols for others’. It concludes with a commentary on Vygotsky’s use of Mandelshtam’s poem ‘The Swallow’, from which he draws his epigraph.     

Taylor’s polynomial and infinitesimals

Taylor’s theorem in analysis provides a way of approximating an n+1-times differentiable real function by an nth degree polynomial in a neighbourhood of a point x ₀. The usefulness of the theorem lies in the fact that if the bounds on |f ⁽ⁿ⁺¹⁾(x)| are known, then the error introduced by the polynomial approximation can be estimated. So while Taylor’s theorem provides an extremely useful manner of approximating the given function to a desired degree of precision in a neighbourhood of a given point, it says nothing about the nature of the polynomial approximation itself, and intuitive arguments are often offered to explain why the derivatives of f must figure in the coefficients of such a polynomial. In what follows, we shall attempt a rigorous explanation of the sense in which such a polynomial is the ‘best’ approximation of the given function.     

Young people’s and parent’s perceptions of managed moves

The current research aimed to increase understanding of the experiences of young people and their parents of managed moves, what contributed to success and the nature of the challenges experienced. The study was conducted in one English Local Authority, where five young people and their parents were interviewed. Five superordinate themes emerged from the interviews, relating to: the initial process (people, trail period, managed moves as a positive solution); the reasons for the move (bullying/social isolation, breakdown in relationships with staff); conceptions of success (happiness, improved self-perceptions, learning and progress), factors contributing to success (fresh start/clean slate; home–school communication; pastoral support, school suitability) and problems arising (moving a problem, narratives around young people, timing and family stress). The findings are discussed in relation to implications for practice.     

Doing science that matters to address India’s water crisis

India is one of the most water stressed countries in the world. However, despite appreciable increase in funding for water research, high quality science that is usable by stakeholders remains elusive. I argue that this can be attributed to the absence of research on questions that actually matter to stakeholders, unwillingness to transcend disciplinary boundaries, and the demise of fleld-work research culture in favour of computer simulation.Conventional wisdom is these trends are driven by what is publishable. However, there is an increasing interest in the international community in interdisciplinary, problem driven, empirical research. Using examples of my own research in Chennai and Bengaluru, on water scarcity in urbanising watersheds, I offer some methods and insights.     

Mother’s, father’s regulation and child’s self-regulation in a computer-mediated learning situation

This study has explored the parents’ regulation strategies that were more likely to support children’s self-regulation in learning situations with computers. These strategies have been analysed by means of new grids involving seven categories of behaviour: cognitive strategies relating to identification of objective, exploration of means, attention and evaluation; motivational strategies; and socio-communicative strategies such as joint attention and request. 62 7-year-old children from Quebec families were examined with their mothers and fathers. The children were asked to complete two learning tasks that involved using LOGO software to draw a picture. Results indicated that parents’ regulation varied depending on their gender; a higher directivity was observed in mothers, more specifically through some specific strategies. Analysis of variance on repeated measures showed that, during the session, there was a decrease in the specification of the objective, the initiation of joint attention and of behaviour regulation in parents; and an improvement of the identification of the objective, planning and self-evaluation in children. Correlations between parental regulation and children’s self-regulation strategies indicated positive links concerning strategies relating to joint attention and to motivation; and negative links concerning strategies relating to the exploration of means and evaluation. A good adjustment of the parents’ regulation and the children’s self-regulation correlated positivel with success in the task. Methodological implications are proposed for research and psycho-educative intervention.     

Summer’s End and Sad Goodbyes: Children’s Picturebooks About Death and Dying

This article explores children’s picturebooks about death and grieving by considering both psychological and literary aspects. Two questions frame this analysis: How can picturebooks, particularly written for young children, support children’s grief when someone dies? How do the illustrations and text of picture books express and convey the aesthetic and emotional experience of loss? Using both psychological research on children’s grief reactions and literary analysis of picturebooks, this paper reviews picturebooks that have been published on the topic of death from 2001 to 2011 and then closely analyzes three books that span a range of topics and approaches to death. Findings indicate that children’s picturebooks convey important psychological and cultural issues through text and illustrations. Furthermore, understanding some of the psychological and literary features of children’s picturebooks that address death and grieving can help educators to provide support and understanding for children when they experience loss.     

Integrative ethical education: Narvaez’s project and Xunzi’s insight

In the early 2000s, some scholars suggested integrative ethical education as an approach to reconcile the gap between cognitive-development education, based on rule ethics, and traditional character-ethics education, inspired by character ethics in Western ethical education. Darcia Narvaez also tried to establish a comprehensive and systematic model. Nonetheless, she has indicated four questions that need further research. This paper aims to respond to Narvaez’s project and its questions from the angle of Xunzi’s ritual education. It argues that Xunzi’s thought may provide some insights for Narvaez’s approach. To present this, it begins its discussion with an introduction of the main ideas of Xunzi’s thought. Later, it tries to show the insights from certain notions and elements, such as Junzi, reasoned judgment, of Xunzi’s ritual education for Narvaez’s project of integrative ethical education. Some relevant questions are also discussed.     

Wordsworth’s ‘We Are Seven’: Reflections on the Secondary English Classroom

English teachers select texts for the edifying qualities they possess: a good poem, novel or film can act both as a window looking out over different lives and as a powerful mirror for reflection. When teachers reflect on their professional practice, however, they generally look to education theory, to research or to action learning strategies. But if great works of literature strengthen a student’s empathetic, critical and reflective capacities, they can do the same for the English teachers who prescribe them. The article does not advocate for a rejection of pedagogical expertise in favour of pure literary criticism, but it does consider that these two aspects of English teaching can be brought together for the purposes of professional reflection and development. Using William Wordsworth’s lyric ‘We Are Seven’ as an example, it aims to illustrate how a close reading of the poem leads naturally and effectively from an analysis of content to more general considerations of why and how we teach.     

‘It’s good enough that our children are accepted’: Roma mothers’ views of children’s education post migration

The discrimination of Roma groups across Europe has been highlighted by several international organisations. For many, poverty, racism and their children’s systematic exclusion from education are ‘push’ factors when deciding to migrate. This study explores Roma mothers’ views of their children’s education post migration and their attitudes to education more broadly, by adopting an intersectional framework and examining issues of difference and belonging as experienced by Roma mothers and their children. While Roma mothers recognised the value of education for social mobility, they remained aware of the limited resources they could draw upon, in the absence of desirable economic and cultural capitals, and as a result of their ethnicity, social class, gender and ‘undesirable migrant’ status. There was a perceived hopelessness in relation to the chances that Roma children have to overcome their marginalisation through schooling, pointing to the need for dedicated policy interventions when working with Roma families.     

Response to Grace’s reflections on Allen and West’s paper

Since the 1970s, school effectiveness research has looked for process-variables filling the black box between mainly structural school features and cognitive outcomes in students. Two concepts came to the fore: school climate and school culture. Both concepts are currently used interchangeably, although it is open to debate whether both are actually the same thing. Because of the way culture and climate are defined and subsequently measured, we propose school culture is a better frame from which to study school effectiveness. This article goes through the premises of perceptual measurement usually overlooked in climate research, and we demonstrate empirically by means of very basic and simple methods and techniques that perceptual measurement and measurement based on assumptions are different approaches and might yield totally different results on an aggregated level. We conclude by demonstrating how culture can be probed and integrated in the models traditionally used in school effectiveness research in an advantageous and theoretically sound way.     

‘Students that just hate school wouldn’t go’: educationally disengaged and disadvantaged young people’s talk about university education

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on widening university participation and brings a focus on the classed and embodied nature of young people’s imagination to existing discussions. We interviewed 250 young people living in disadvantaged communities across five Australian states who had experienced disengagement from compulsory primary and secondary schooling. We asked them about their education and their educational futures, specifically how they imagined universities and university participation. For these young people, universities were imagined as ‘big’, ‘massive’ alienating schools. The paper explores how the elements of schooling from which these young people disengaged became tangible barriers to imagining and pursuing participation in university education. The primary barrier they described was their relationships with school teachers. Our analysis shows how relationships with teachers can impact the imagined improbability/probability of university participation. We offer suggestions for how barriers to university created by poor relationships with teachers may be overcome.     

‘We learnt that last week’: reading into the language practices of teachers

The messages teachers convey to their students through their use of language can often go unconsidered, yet such practices can have a significant impact on students and their schooling, and in the creation of learning difficulties. In this paper we employ a discursive and ideological approach to analysing teachers’ language practices and suggest that such systematic examination is warranted given the centrality of ‘teacher talk’ to students’ schooling. We draw attention to these concerns through an analysis of a spoken text between a teacher and student in the context of ‘show and tell’; a dialogue drawn from a larger body of data of interviews with and observations of teachers in six Australian primary schools. The analysis attempts to uncover the meanings conveyed to the student in question, Sam, through his teacher’s language practices and to demonstrate the potentially detrimental effects of these practices on his schooling. Generally, we propose that teachers frequently employ linguistic techniques to refashion students in various ways, according to the norms of schooling; norms that often do not account very well for student difference and which position them as ‘difficult’. Specifically, we argue that Sam’s teacher seems more interested in moulding Sam’s behaviour to conform to the interests of the school than in valuing his heritage and contributions.