Learning to teach,learning to act: becoming a critical literacy teacher

Critical literacy requires an exploration of privilege and social justice. This includes an exploration of power and action in one’s “inner” and “outer” lives. This qualitative case study illustrates the ways in which Jonah, a preservice teacher, navigates social practices and actions in his roles as a student, activist, and literacy teacher. Through critical discourse analysis, we conceptualize social action in relation to critical literacy teaching, using a framework of discourses of, discourses as, and discourses in action to construct a nuanced understanding of social action in relation to critical literacy. Given the demands of a standardized curriculum on teachers’ autonomy, this is an important illustration of how social action can be enacted and embodied through the act of teaching.     

Whatever it takes! Using a component theory approach with public secondary school principals ‘doing schooling differently’

Purpose: The research seeks to capture the ‘special character’ of schools as seen through the eyes of the Principal and to introduce alternative understandings of ideological praxis’ to challenge and unsettle the dominant ideology and logics of secondary schooling with consequent school design implications in South Australia.

Design/methodology/approach: Using an ideological framework based, the research focussed on the common shared understandings across each school pertaining to each ideology. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and analysed through interpretive and hermeneutic processes.

Findings: The findings show the tensions, subtleties and nuances of two dominant and competing ideologies: a dominant discourse of individual schooling purpose for student mobility and economic productivity and an emerging public purposes ideology of education for good citizenship, sustainable futures and the public good. The dominant neoliberal public policy ideology and the associated historical design logics of conventional schooling is challenged and reconstituted by the experience, expertise, courage, determination and moral purpose of the principals in this research.

Originality/value: This article opens specific ideological understandings held by the Principals that have moved all of the schools towards pedagogical excellence and a repurposing of their organisations for the students’ sake.     

Experiencing an ‘inclusive’ education: parents and their children with ‘special educational needs’

This paper focuses on the experiences of British parents who have children identified with ‘special education needs’ within mainstream education. Expectations of mainstream education can have a negative affect on parents when a child is unable to maintain his or her education within a mainstream school. In England and Wales, ‘inclusion’ within mainstream schools is implemented by the current government and promoted as anti‐exclusionary. However, current research indicates that actual ‘inclusion’ (the child experiencing inclusion as well as being placed in a mainstream environment) is not necessarily occurring in practice. As it stands, the conflict is between desires to embrace difference based on a philosophy of ‘equal rights’ (‘inclusive’ education) and prioritising educational performance, structuring it in such a way that it leaves little room for difference and creativity due to the highly structured testing and examination culture. Qualitative analysis of parents who have children identified with special educational needs indicate that they have hopes and expectations for their children. These hopes and expectations are challenged recurrently.     

Chemosensory-based contextual conditioning inHermissenda crassicornis

In two experiments, the marine molluskHermissenda crassicornis was exposed to context discrimination training. In one context, defined by the presence of a diffuse chemosensory stimulus (shellfish extract A), brief, unsignaled, unconditioned stimuli (USs; high-speed rotation) were presented; in a second context, defined by the presence of shellfish extract B, no USs were presented. Animals were then tested (at both 1.5 and 24 h) by exposing them to small pieces of the shellfish meat used to define the two contexts. The latency to strike at the meat served as an index of the context-US association. In Experiment 1, the latency to strike at the cue associated with rotation was reduced relative to both preconditioning strike latencies and the associatively neutral cue. However, in a two-choice test where the animals could approach the conditioned or neutral stimulus, the animals regularly avoided the stimulus paired with rotation. Moreover, if, following conditioning, the animals were presented with an unsignaled rotation in the conditioned context or the neutral context, the animals exhibited more effective defensive clinging (an unconditioned reflex normally elicited by rotation) in the conditioned context, suggesting that it “prepared” the animal for the aversive US. In total, these results demonstrate thatHermissenda is capable of making associations to diffuse background (contextual) stimuli. Moreover, the results suggest that pairing the chemosensory cue with an aversive US elicits a strike response inHermissenda when the animal is placed in forced contact with the cue and an active avoidance response when the animal can choose between that cue and a neutral cue.     

Exploring the Use of Lesson Study to Develop Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching Nature of Science

This study explored a modified version of Japanese Lesson Study to determine whether and how it influenced preservice elementary teachers in their abilities to deliver science lessons that included nature of science (NOS) to their own students. We used a case study approach that focused on one subset of a cohort of preservice elementary teachers within their field placement settings. Data sources included lesson plans, lesson feedback forms, videotapes of delivered lessons, and videotapes of lesson study feedback sessions. Early in the semester peers provided feedback on content, and later in the semester peers provided feedback on classroom management as well as content during the lesson study feedback sessions. We found that preservice elementary teachers were able to provide feedback to their peers regarding how to include NOS in their science lessons, yet did not naturally included NOS connections within their own lessons.     

Dimensions of child sexual abuse before age 15 in three Central American countries: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala

OBJECTIVE: The prevalence of sexual abuse during childhood or adolescence varies depending on the definitions and age categories used. This study examines the first national, population-based data available on child sexual abuse that occurs before age 15 in three countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. This study uses comparable indicators and measures of sexual abuse for the three countries to document the prevalence of abuse, types of perpetrators, and the association of child sexual abuse with recent intimate partner violence. METHODS: Child sexual abuse was defined as sexual abuse that first occurs before age 15. Nationally representative data from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were used. In El Salvador, separate questions on forced intercourse and non-penetrative sexual abuse were asked. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed using STATA Version 8SE. RESULTS: The prevalence of child sexual abuse varied from 7.8% in Honduras to 6.4% in El Salvador and 4.7% in Guatemala. In all three countries, the overwhelming majority of women who reported child sexual abuse first experienced the abuse before age 11. Perpetrators tended to be a family member, a neighbor, or an acquaintance. Bivariate and multivariate analyses indicated that women who experienced child sexual abuse in Guatemala and Honduras were about two times more likely to be in violent relationships as women who did not experience abuse. This relationship was not significant in multivariate analyses for El Salvador where the prevalence of intimate partner violence was the lowest. CONCLUSIONS: Child sexual abuse in Central America is clearly a problem with the prevalence between 5% and 8%. Child sexual abuse can have long-term negative health impacts including exposure to intimate partner violence in adulthood. Programs to prevent abuse and treat victims of child sexual abuse are needed in Central America.     

Reflection in Higher Education: A Concept Analysis

Despite the widespread adoption of reflective practices across many fields of study, a critical analysis of the concept of reflection and its application within higher education has been lacking. This article provides an examination of several major theoretical approaches to reflection including those of Dewey; Loughran; Mezirow; Seibert and Daudelin; Langer; Boud, Keogh and Walker; and Schön. Commonalties in terminology, definitions, antecedents, context, process, outcomes, and techniques to foster reflection are addressed. The implications of the findings for higher education are explained.     

Gender Differences in Faculty Member Job Satisfaction: Equity Forestalled?

Guided by Hagedorn’s (2000) theory of faculty job satisfaction, mindful of social and organizational structures of higher education, and acknowledging recent changes in the academic labor market, this study examines satisfaction for approximately 30,000 tenured and tenure-track faculty members in 100 US colleges and universities. Findings revealed similarity between female and male faculty members in some aspects of work satisfaction, but difference in other areas in which women reported lower satisfaction. Findings also revealed that perceptions of department fit, recognition, work role balance, and mentoring are more important to women faculty’s satisfaction than male peers. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

The value of institutional research in the assessment of institutional effectiveness

A survey of 167 institutions engaged in the regional reaccreditation process between 1987 and 1992 revealed that the presence of institutional research activities was positively related to the institution carrying out a systematic assessment of institutional effectiveness. Institutional research activity was more predictive of assessment efforts than was the type of governance (public or private), the level of degree offered, or enrollment size. An alarmingly low proportion of institutions had begun to define outcomes at the time of the survey—a first step in the development of assessment procedures. Even fewer had identified ways of measuring outcomes. Budgets and staff expertise were felt to be adequate for current responsibilities but insufficient to assume responsibility for assessing institutional effectiveness. Institutional research activity is urgently needed in order to support the data collection efforts required by institutional assessment mandates. Whether these activities are conducted by institutional researchers or are dispersed across the campus, they provide the underpinnings for assessment.     

Imitation and Pantomime in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders

A study was designed to test 2 alternative hypotheses—a symbolic hypothesis and an executive function hypothesis—for the imitation and pantomime deficits found in previous studies of autism. The subjects were 17 adolescent high-functioning subjects with autism spectrum disorders and 15 clinical comparison subjects who were matched on chronological age and verbal IQ. Meaning and sequence were manipulated in facial and manual imitation tasks. Sequence was manipulated in the pantomime and control tasks. Recognition memory and motor control tasks were matched to the experimental tasks. The results provided no support for the symbolic deficit hypothesis; meaning aided rather than hindered the performance of the group with autism. Partial support for the executive deficit hypothesis was found. There were no group differences on motor control tasks, and few on the memory control tasks, arguing against deficits in motor initiation, basic motor coordination, or visual recognition memory.