Professionalism: a comparative case study of teachers,nurses, and social workers

While there are numerous calls to enhance the professionalism of teachers, there is little empirical research in the United States that examines educators’ understanding of the concept. This comparative case study compared the conceptualisation of professionalism by faculty and students in a college of education vis-à-vis the conceptualisation of the construct by faculty and students in a college of nursing and a school of social work. Findings revealed that notions of professionalism expressed by educators can be characterised as restricted, by nurses as status professionalism, and by social workers as activist professionalism. The findings suggest that in order to empower teachers to be full professionals, a deliberate attention to the development of their professionalism is needed.     

Teaching Groups as Foci for Evaluating Performance in Cost-Effectiveness of GCE Advanced Level Provision: Some Practical Methodological Innovations1

Some key methodological issues in factors affecting educational effectiveness within schools are discussed. The motivation is an analysis of subject teaching group effectiveness in English and Welsh GCE Advanced Level prior to a linking to resources. Cross-classified multilevel models with weighted random effects are suggested for disentangling student, group, and teacher effects. Analyses show that there is considerable variation between subjects within students. Teacher effects are shown to be considerable but explanations for variation cannot be sought in the conventional personal characteristics of teachers. One conclusion is that it is availability of data which constrains such investigations and not methodology.     

Sexual Harassment of College Students by Lecturers in Zimbabwe

Sexual harassment of female students by their lecturers has become a serious social problem in schools and institutions of higher education in Zimbabwe. The current study is an in-depth follow-up to Zindi's study (1994) and sought to investigate and establish whether or not inappropriate relationships between male lecturers and female students exist; whether female lecturers sexually harass male students; and whether there is a relationship between sexual harassment and students' performance in their studies. There may be a relationship between sexual harassment and the performance of female students in examinations. The results of a questionnaire completed by 83 students in one higher education institution in Zimbabwe revealed the widespread sexual harassment of female students by male lecturers and the different perceptions of such harassment held by male and female students. Possible implications of these findings to education are discussed and recommendations made.     

Liminal spaces constructed by primary schools in predominantly white working-class areas in England

ABSTRACT

Despite successive policy interventions, students’ socio-economic status continues to strongly predict educational outcomes. Many schools aspire to ‘close’ this ‘gap’. This paper presents an ethnographic study of a group of Primary schools in predominantly white working-class areas in the Midlands of England. Generating ethnographic data through time-recurrent, multi-sited fieldwork including observation, informal conversations, semi-structured interviews, photography and documentary analysis, findings were constructed through critical dialogue between the group of six researchers. A concept of liminal spaces is used to analyse the schools’ work in seeking to move individuals, families, and communities beyond that which they previously knew, foregrounding norms, practices, and discourses constructed on the ‘inside’, and highlighting aspects in tension with the imagined ‘outside’. These schools’ conceptualisations of poverty are shown to be complex and multifaceted, and suggestions are made to employ liminality for articulating and critically exploring the spaces and transformations that schools seek to construct.     

Optimism as a Candidate Health Asset: Exploring Its Links With Adolescent Quality of Life in Sweden

This study aims to understand the role that optimism could play in the context of a health asset approach to promote adolescent health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Adolescents (n = 948), between 11 and 16 years old from a medium-sized rural town in Sweden, answered questionnaires measuring optimism, pessimism, and HRQOL. The findings indicate a significant decrease in optimism and a significant increase in pessimism between early and midadolescence. The study has allowed us to present associational evidence of the links between optimism and HRQOL. This infers the potential of an optimistic orientation about the future to function as a health asset during adolescence and by implication may provide additional intervention tool in the planning of health promotion strategies.     

Transforming the school workforce: perspectives on school reform in England

This paper describes the experience of change management observed as part of an evaluation of the Transforming School Workforce Pathfinder Project commissioned by the UK Government for the English education system. The 32 Pilot Schools made interventions in organisational practice in ways that required them to think differently about work. Changes in the number, type and deployment of the school workforce combined with thinking about the nature of work have challenged existing practices. In particular, a focus on change management teams drawn from the whole school workforce, supported by an external school workforce advisor, has required schools to examine the nature of decision-making and participation. We intend to draw on evidence from eight case study schools and through this examine the implications for how change is understood and practiced. We critically engage with the government’s preference for a particular model of change to bring about organisational improvement, and we reveal a pluralistic and dynamic field both within practice and theorising.