Coaching whiteness: stories of ‘Pacifica exotica’ in Australian high school rugby

The intersection of sport and education is a potentially powerful site for the production of class and gender. This paper examines how the relationship between sport and education can also serve to (re)produce ideas about ‘race’. Drawing on research conducted during my time as a coach of the first XV rugby team at an elite private school in Australia, I consider how whiteness creates the ‘other’. In particular I highlight how, despite their absence, the Pacific Island ‘other’ is (re)produced through stories that coaches share during training. These stories revolve around the themes of the ‘natural’, fear and violence and commodity. As themes they resonate with a larger meta-narrative that informs dominant ‘white’ culture on Pacific Islanders in Australia. Such stories have the power to shape students’ subjectivities, both of themselves and Pacific Islanders. Deconstructing the white-stream narrative identifies sport settings in education as important pedagogical sites where ‘race’, class and gender are learned. As such, there is a need to utilise critical pedagogical approaches in the education of sports coaches.     

Mathematics-for-Teaching: an Ongoing Investigation of the Mathematics that Teachers (Need to) Know

In this article we offer a theoretical discussion of teachers' mathematics-for-teaching, using complexity science as a framework for interpretation. We illustrate the discussion with some teachers' interactions around mathematics that arose in the context of an in-service session. We use the events from that session to illustrate four intertwining aspects of teachers' mathematics-for-teaching. We label these aspects “mathematical objects,” “curriculum structures,” “classroom collectivity,” and “subjective understanding”. Drawing on complexity science, we argue that these phenomena are nested in one another and that they obey similar dynamics, albeit on very different time scales. We conjecture (1) that a particular fluency with these four aspects is important for mathematics teaching and (2) that these aspects might serve as appropriate emphases for courses in mathematics intended for teachers.     

Assessing the Impact of School-Based Marketing Efforts: A Case Study of a Foreign Language Immersion Program in a School-Choice Environment

The marketization of K–12 education has led to an increase in school-based marketing efforts. Relatively little research, however, has examined how public schools market themselves, who is involved in marketing, and how these marketing efforts impact key stakeholders, including school administrators, teachers, students, and parents. We explore these questions in this qualitative study of school-based marketing efforts at South Boulevard,¹Because of the long and public history of desegregation litigation associated with the school and with the school district, we use real place names throughout the paper. Thus, we disclose both the school's name—South Boulevard Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet—and the name of the city in which the school is located—Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in order to maintain the authenticity of the case and the findings. a foreign language immersion magnet elementary school in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Analysis of data from participant observation and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders reveals that administrators, teachers, parents, and students actively participated in marketing and recruiting, and that these efforts were associated with a number of implicit and explicit costs. Introducing two concepts from the business literature—business-level strategy and brand communities—yields a number of observations and policy questions. Finally, the shifting role of parents and administrators in an increasingly market-like school-choice environment is discussed.     

Improving teacher professional development for online and blended learning: a systematic meta-aggregative review

Educational technology research and development - In order to fully realise the potential of online and blended learning (OBL), teacher professional development (TPD) strategies on how to teach in...     

Understanding gaps in research networks: using “spatial reasoning” as a window into the importance of networked educational research

This paper finds its origins in a multidisciplinary research group’s efforts to assemble a review of research in order to better appreciate how “spatial reasoning” is understood and investigated across academic disciplines. We first collaborated to create a historical map of the development of spatial reasoning across key disciplines over the last century. The map informed the structure of our citation search and oriented an examination of connection across disciplines. Next, we undertook a network analysis that was based on highly cited articles in a broad range of domains. Several connection gaps—that is, apparent blockages, one-way flows, and other limitations on communications among disciplines—were identified in our network analysis, and it was apparent that these connection gaps may be frustrating efforts to understand the conceptual complexity and the educational significance of spatial reasoning. While these gaps occur between the academic disciplines that we evaluated, we selected a few examples for closer analysis. To illustrate how this lack of flow can limit development of the field of mathematics education, we selected cases where it is evident that researchers in mathematics education are not incorporating the important work of mathematicians, psychologists, and neuroscientists—and vice versa. Ultimately, we argue, a more pronounced emphasis on transdisciplinary (versus multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary) research might be timely, and perhaps even necessary, in the evolution of educational research.     

The sociology of policy change within international organisations: beyond coercive and normative perspectives – towards circuits of power

ABSTRACT

For international organisations in the global education policy field, legitimacy is based in large part on the supposed techno-rational basis of these organisations and their ability to credibly produce knowledge and policy expertise. However, as the present article demonstrates, there are clearly a range of macro–micro organisational dynamics driving the production of knowledge and the policy ideas that are advanced. By revealing the way that a particular policy emerged and was promoted within the World Bank, this article seeks to expose the way that policy innovation is produced by the iterative interplay of agentic activity and particular organisational circumstances – and how this process is used to maintain and extend the influence of international organisations and the individuals who represent them. By drawing on Stewart Clegg’s ‘circuits of power’ approach, we seek to theorise the internal dynamics of international organisations, and, in so doing, to move beyond the dominant coercive and normative perspectives.     

A failure to obtain magnetic discrimination in the pigeon

Six pigeons were trained on a multiple-concurrent schedule. During both multiple-schedule components, two response keys were available. In Component 1, responses to the left key were reinforced on a variable-interval 45-sec schedule, whereas responses to the right key were not reinforced. In Component 2, these contingencies were reversed. Following each reinforcer, the component next presented was chosen randomly with equal probability. The two components were differentially signaled by presentation of various stimuli during Component 1. Over the course of the experiment, these stimuli were various intensities of light, a noise, and various fluctuating and static magnetic fields. While subjects showed good discrimination of the light and noise stimuli, no stimulus control using the magnetic fields was obtained.     

The double-edged sword: Critical reflections on traditional and modern technology in outdoor education

The outdoor education experience continues to be influenced by a proliferation of modern technological innovations, most of which have been accepted and even embraced by educators with little inquiry. Seldom do instructors of outdoor programmes consider the impact that modern techniques and equipment can have upon students' learning. This paper argues that in an unexamined adoption of this technology, some of the potential positive impacts for participants can be compromised, including a direct and meaningful connection to the natural world. As such, modern technology has become a possible mediating influence for participants in outdoor education programmes. The paper examines some of the pedagogical issues of modern technology as a mediator of experience as well as several elements of educating in the outdoors with traditional technology. Woven into the discussion is the question of whether modern technology encourages more people to become involved in outdoor activities or merely works toward the separation of humans from the rest of nature.     

Causes and consequences of student evaluation of instruction

Student evaluation of course quality was examined as an intervening variable in a path model with seven input variables and the following two output variables: (1) whether students would recommend the course to others, and (2) students' plans to take more courses in the discipline. Student evaluation of the lecturer was the most powerful input variable for the intervening variable course rating. Class format, defined as lecture or lecture with small groups, did not affect course ratingper se but did relate to students' attitudes toward taking more courses in the discipline. Lecturer and textbook evaluation had significant independent effects on whether the student would recommend the course to others. The major implication for university departments is that quality of instruction in introductory courses has impact on future enrollment plans.     

Complexity Science and Education: Reconceptualizing the Teacher’s Role in Learning

This writing is structured around the question, "What is teaching?" Drawing on complexity science, we first seek to demonstrate the tremendously conflicted character of contemporary discussions of teaching. Then we offer two examples of teaching that we use to illustrate the assertion that what teaching is can never be reduced to or understood in terms of what the teacher does or intends. Rather, teaching must be understood in terms of its complex contributions to new, as-yet-unimaginable collective possibilities.