Sustaining professional learning communities: Case studies

The purpose is to document the ongoing development of two schools in becoming professional learning communities and the effects of meaningful collaboration on teacher learning. The question that guides this research is: How does a school become a sustainable professional learning community? The theoretical framework is based on the work of Senge, Hord, Fullan, Hargreaves and Fink, and Stoll, McMahon and Thomas and includes the areas of professional learning community, change and sustainability. Finally, the study addresses the relationship between professional learning community and school culture. The methodology involves a qualitative case study approach designed to gain information regarding two emerging schools in their journeys toward developing learning community cultures. Findings reveal the stories of each school as they evolved as PLCs and the similarities and differences that emerged. Knowing that sustaining the culture of a PLC is complex, and not to be achieved without determination and growth, we look ahead at challenges to be addressed and further research to be conducted. Finally, we offer some concluding statements and attempt to relate findings to the literature on PLCs. The intent is to identify some of the intricacies in building cultures of learning for adults and students. As we have learned through these two stories, many things happen simultaneously, to greater or lesser degrees, at varying points in time over a period of years that seem to influence the development of a PLC. Such development seems so complex that to be able to describe discrete steps or stages is unlikely. Still we are beginning to see that some categories of activities and issues must be developed before others can emerge.     

A meta-analysis on the influence of gamification in formal educational settings on affective and behavioral outcomes

Educational technology research and development - The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of gamification used in formal educational settings on student affective and behavioral...     

Antioxidant effect ofPhyllanthus emblica fruits on healing of indomethacin induced gastric ulcer in rats

Post-treatment of the indomethacin induced ulcerated rats at the optimal dose of 100 mg/kg body-wt. orally for 7 consecutive days with the lyophilized aqueous extract of the fruits ofPhyllanthus emblica L. syn.Emblica officinalis Gaertn. (Euphorbiaceae) exhibited highly significant (p<0.001) enhancement of secretion of catalase, reduced glutathione and decrease in malonyldialdehyde (MDA). Furthermore, the gross morphological observation and highly significant (p<0.001) decrease of ulcer index (81.43%) indicated healing effect of the extract on gastric ulcer.     

Structuring First-Year Retention at a Regional Public Institution: Validating and Refining the Structure of Bowman’s SEM Analysis

Research in Higher Education - Structural equation modeling (SEM) considering how students’ non-cognitive attributes influence first-year college student persistence remain extraordinarily...     

Munna Guru – portrait of a eunuch

Abstract

In this essay, Ho Tzu Nyen attempts to unearth a subterranean narrative that threads through three films produced by three male Singaporean directors – namely Mee Pok Man (1995) by Eric Khoo, 15 (2003) by Royston Tan, and Zombie Dogs (2004) by Toh Hai Leong. This narrative of unconsciously repeated motifs that migrate from film to film is in turn analyzed as a recurrent symptom that haunts a number of Singaporean cinematic productions from the 1990s onwards. This symptom, which can be summarily described as a paranoid relationship to ‘otherness’, makes manifest a variety of psychic tendencies such as morbid fear of impotence, misogyny, and fetishization of the social other. For Ho, such impulses are in turn intricately linked to what he, following the literary critic Harold Bloom, calls ‘The Anxiety of Influence’. For Bloom, every poet embarks upon his career after a prior encounter with another poet, or poem. As a result, the ‘late‐coming’ poet inevitably suffers from a sense of threatened autonomy, because his profoundest insights and deepest desires are always already elucidated by another. For the Singaporean filmmaker, Ho argues that this ‘anxiety’ in relation to the cinematic tradition takes on a peculiar nature and a doubled pressure, for the canon that inspires them is perceived as being something essentially foreign. Hence the Singaporean filmmaker makes cinema as though he is stuttering in a foreign tongue. Therefore, the concept of ‘the anxiety of influence’ is modulated and compounded with a ‘postcolonial anxiety’. In addition, Ho also draws upon the concepts of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze in an attempt to sketch out an ontology of cinema that at once functions in a deconstructive relationship to ‘auteur‐driven’ modes of analyses, while avoiding what he perceives as the overly ‘sociological’ bent that characterizes much of the existing corpus of writings on Singaporean cinema.     

Conceptions of mentoring: An empirical study of conceptions of mentoring during the school-based teacher education

This article discusses the mentoring given by the mentor (cooperating teacher) during the practical part of teacher training. This mentoring is empirically described by studying and describing how it is conceived of by a group of mentors and student teachers. The differences in conceptions found concerning the functions are discussed in terms of a reflecting and a taken-for-granted perspective of professional knowledge of teachers. As regards conceptions of the content, it is discussed whether student teachers' practice teaching is an object of reflection or an occasion for practice. Conceptions and patterns of behaviour as regards the form of mentoring are discussed in terms of a principle-oriented strategy and an episode-oriented strategy. The variation described in this way in terms of the disparate perspectives could reflect different types of theoretical awareness of the phenomenon of mentoring that exist among mentors and student teachers.     

Anthropogenic emission is the main contributor to the rise of atmospheric methane during 1993–2017

Atmospheric methane (CH₄) concentrations have shown a puzzling resumption in growth since 2007 following a period of stabilization from 2000 to 2006. Multiple hypotheses have been proposed to explain the temporal variations in CH₄ growth, and attribute the rise of atmospheric CH₄ either to increases in emissions from fossil fuel activities, agriculture and natural wetlands, or to a decrease in the atmospheric chemical sink. Here, we use a comprehensive ensemble of CH₄ source estimates and isotopic δ¹³C-CH₄ source signature data to show that the resumption of CH₄ growth is most likely due to increased anthropogenic emissions. Our emission scenarios that have the fewest biases with respect to isotopic composition suggest that the agriculture, landfill and waste sectors were responsible for 53 ± 13% of the renewed growth over the period 2007–2017 compared to 2000–2006; industrial fossil fuel sources explained an additional 34 ± 24%, and wetland sources contributed the least at 13 ± 9%. The hypothesis that a large increase in emissions from natural wetlands drove the decrease in atmospheric δ¹³C-CH₄ values cannot be reconciled with current process-based wetland CH₄ models. This finding suggests the need for increased wetland measurements to better understand the contemporary and future role of wetlands in the rise of atmospheric methane and climate feedback. Our findings highlight the predominant role of anthropogenic activities in driving the growth of atmospheric CH₄ concentrations.     

A Delphi Study and Initial Validation of Counselor Supervision Competencies

The authors addressed the lack of supervision training standards for doctoral counseling graduates by developing and validating an initial list of supervision competencies. They used content analysis, Delphi polling, and content validity methods to generate a list, vetted by 2 different panels of supervision experts, of 33 competencies grouped into 5 categories.     

Academic Optimism and Teacher Education

Abstract

Stereotypes are a particularly insidious factor in the formation of pre‐ and in‐service teachers’ images of students. Teachers who rely on stereotypes rather than try to see the students behind them run the risk of letting cultural and individual biases work to their own disadvantage and to the disadvantage of the next generation of high school students. This article describes a project called Teaching and Learning Together that brings preservice teachers into direct dialogue with high school students with the goal of helping preservice teachers learn to attend to high school students and analyze the pedagogical implications of that attention prior to undertaking teaching responsibilities.