Gender and doctoral studies: the perceptions of Ph.D. students in an American university

Twenty students enrolled in Ph.D. programmes were interviewed to examine the role of gender in their academic experiences. Gender was examined in three ways: gender of the student, gender of the student’s faculty supervisor and gender make‐up of the faculty within the student’s department or academic unit. All students reported the importance of supportive faculty mentors and that financial worries, time pressure and the uncertainty of future employment were sources of stress. Family formation and striving toward personal as well as professional goals were particularly of concern for women, as were perceptions of differential treatment. Women students valued women faculty mentors, although female faculty were perceived as less supportive than male faculty of family concerns when these women had themselves sacrificed family formation for the sake of their careers. Both men and women experienced less stress and reported greater career commitment when faculty in their departments exhibited less traditional values regarding the balancing of personal and professional goals. The implications of these findings for reducing doctoral student attrition rates and for creating a more supportive environment for Ph.D. students are discussed.     

Smoking hygiene: an educational intervention to reduce respiratory symptoms in breastfeeding infants exposed to tobacco

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently removed nicotine from the category of drugs contraindicated during breastfeeding. Little evidence demonstrates that infants exposed to nicotine through breastfeeding experience increased health risks beyond the airborne risks associated with passive smoking. The purpose of this longitudinal, five-week, quasi-experimental pilot study was to determine whether "smoking hygiene," an educational intervention, reduces the frequency of respiratory symptoms experienced by infants whose mothers both smoke and breastfeed. Twenty-nine mother-infant pairs entered the study with 28% dropping out. Of the 21 mother-infant pairs who completed the study, 66% of the nine infants in the control group experienced respiratory illness, compared to 42% of the 12 infants in the intervention group (x2 = .814; p > .05). Thus, the difference was statistically nonsignificant in this small sample, but the trend worsened the anticipated direction. The study demonstrates some of the difficulties of intervening with this group of mothers.     

Preliminary evidence for the impact of mixed-income preschools on low-income children's language growth

Previous studies have identified the features of preschool programs that correlate with positive outcomes for low-income children, but the impact of economic integration has not been studied. This study compares the receptive language growth of two groups of children from low-income families. One group of children (N = 35) attended economically integrated preschools and the other (N = 50) attended preschools for low-income families. Language scores of the two groups were not significantly different when they entered the programs in the fall, but the children in integrated programs scored significantly higher than the other group in the spring. This effect was not significant for children who spoke a language other than English at home. The impact of program type was most evident for children from low-income families who spoke only English at home. When these children were integrated into economically mixed programs their spring scores (adjusted for fall scores) were not significantly different from those of English-speaking peers from more affluent families in the same programs. It is suggested that the language skills of these more advantaged peers may have had a positive impact on the language learning environment in the economically integrated preschools. Implications for school readiness initiatives and further study are discussed.     

Developing and sustaining an educative mentoring model of STEM teacher professional development through collaborative partnership

In this paper, we present details of a partnership undertaken by four universities with field-based, alternative STEM teacher preparation programs and a large urban school district to provide ongoing professional support for teachers serving as mentors for individuals preparing for careers in high-poverty schools. We also present key findings related to our implementation of an educative mentoring professional learning community (PLC) as a professional development (PD) model for these mentors. Our analysis reveals that mentors as well as candidates identified the PD program as addressing their specific interests and concerns, and that they were regularly and deeply engaged with key activities that were part of each session’s agenda. These findings signal how key elements of PD workshops can contribute to creating and sustaining a local but replicable PLC utilizing an educative mentoring model to support mentors and the future teachers whom they support.     

Rethinking diversity in learning science: The logic of everyday sense‐making

There are many ways to understand the gap in science learning and achievement separating low‐income, ethnic minority and linguistic minority children from more economically privileged students. In this article we offer our perspective. First, we discuss in broad strokes how the relationship between everyday and scientific knowledge and ways of knowing has been conceptualized in the field of science education research. We consider two dominant perspectives on this question, one which views the relationship as fundamentally discontinuous and the other which views it as fundamentally continuous. We locate our own work within the latter tradition and propose a framework for understanding the everyday sense‐making practices of students from diverse communities as an intellectual resource in science learning and teaching. Two case studies follow in which we elaborate this point of view through analysis of Haitian American and Latino students' talk and activity as they work to understand metamorphosis and experimentation, respectively. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this new conceptualization for research on science learning and teaching. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 529–552, 2001     

Parent-Infant Rough Play: Its Cultural Specificity

The salience of father-infant rough play in some industrialized and nonindustrialized countries around the world was reviewed, and data were presented on the physical play interactions of 34Indianmothers and fathers with their year-old infants in the home. Our review of the parent-infant physical play literature failed to show that fathers had a uniformly greater propensity to engage in vigorous rough activity with infants than mothers did. The data from the observational study suggest that Indian parents are not vigorous play partners to infants. Mothers were more likely to engage in object-mediated play than were fathers. In total, the data reviewed do not support the contention that rough play is a major activity between fathers and infants across cultures. Rather, the data from parent-infant play in the nonindustrialized countries suggest that rough play may be culture specific, casting doubts about its biological underpinnings.     

No More Silos: Animating Integrated Health and Behavioral Health Care Practices in the Classroom

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, there has been increased momentum to bring the worlds of physical and behavioral health care together. Instead of social work education simply reacting to this change, it is imperative that we be proactive and prepare students to be “multilingual,” that is, be able to speak and function in both the worlds of health and mental health so they can move seamlessly into the new world of integrated care. The purpose of this article is to explore curricular and pedagogical strategies needed to prepare graduate social work students for the coming shift in practice toward integrated health and mental health care.     

Knowledge management support for teachers

Business organizations worldwide are implementing techniques and technologies to better manage their knowledge. Their objective is to improve the quality of the contributions people make to their organizations by helping them to make sense of the context within which the organization exists; to take responsibility, cooperate, and share what they know and learn; and to effectively challenge, negotiate, and learn from others. We consider how the concepts, tools, and techniques of organizational knowledge management can be applied to the professional practices and development of teachers. We describe a framework for knowledge management support for teachers where the sharing of concrete knowledge scaffolds the attainment of more abstract levels of knowledge sharing. We describe the development of a knowledge management support system emphasizing long-term participatory design relationships between technologists and teachers, regional cooperation among teachers in adjacent school divisions, the integration of communication and practice, synchronous and asynchronous interactions, and multiple metaphors for organizing knowledge resources and activities. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, REC-0106552.     

Literacy,subjectivity and the gender divide: ‘the freedom of writing implies the freedom of the citizen’ (Sartre, 1948)

The aim of the research project was to explore new ways in which we might evaluate boys’ and girls’ engagement and ‘performance’ in English at Key Stage 3. This paper draws on recent theories regarding literacy, identity and gender and includes an analysis of short stories written by boys and girls aged 12‐ to 13‐years‐old. An exploration of literacy, which relates here to the pupils’ treatment of theme, style and structure, will develop further an understanding of their ability to access the imagination and express original creative ideas. This discussion suggests ways to develop the teaching of creative writing and explores to what extent reading pupils’ narrative fiction might reveal their cultural literacy.