Can student teachers acquire core skills for teaching from part‐time employment?

Part‐time employment among university students has become commonplace internationally. Research has largely focused on the impact of part‐time employment on academic performance. This research takes an original approach in that it poses the question whether students can acquire core skills relevant to teaching from their part‐time employment. The research was conducted in a university college of education. A case study approach was adopted using an opportunistic sample of 285 students drawn from two BEd programmes. The project is based on an interpretive paradigm, focusing on students’ perceptions of their part‐time employment. The research methodology included a questionnaire containing both closed and open questions, a follow‐up focus group discussion and two case histories. The results showed that the majority of students believed that they had acquired core skills from their part‐time employment. The findings of this research raise important issues about how university courses can effectively build on such learning experiences.     

A Taxonomy for Categorizing Generalizations: Generalizing Actions and Reflection Generalizations

This article presents a cohesive, empirically grounded categorization system differentiating the types of generalizations students constructed when reasoning mathematically. The generalization taxonomy developed out of an empirical study conducted during a 3-week teaching experiment and a series of individual interviews. Qualitative analysis of data from teaching sessions with 7 seventh-graders and individual interviews with 7 eighth-graders resulted in a taxonomy that distinguishes between students' activity as they generalize, or generalizing actions, and students' final statements of generalization, or reflection generalizations. The three major generalizing action categories that emerged from analysis are (a) relating, in which one forms an association between two or more problems or objects, (b) searching, in which one repeats an action to locate an element of similarity, and (c) extending, in which one expands a pattern or relation into a more general structure. Reflection generalizations took the form of identifications or statements, definitions, and the influence of prior ideas or strategies. By locating generalization within the learner's viewpoint, the taxonomy moves beyond casting it as an activity at which students either fail or succeed to allow researchers to identify what students see as general, and how they engage in the act of generalizing.     

Outside the Comfort Zone of the Classroom

What comes to mind when the word learning is mentioned? Is it a classroom full of students and a teacher dictating notes as the students struggle emphatically to write down every word that is said? Is it a picture of a student in the library with a stack of books piled on a desk, trying to read them all? These examples of learning may fit the traditional definition but this paper expands learning to include service. This paper describes a non‐traditional style of learning that takes the student “out of the comfort zone of the classroom” into the community and explains how this experience has an impact on the students’ education as well as their lives. The authors of this paper hope to influence its readers to re‐think the definition of learning by understanding the importance of service.     

A pragmatic method for teaching and assessing research methods

One of the most demanding tasks for the professor is to develop the research and writing skills of students. This article describes the use of a teaching method that was originally developed to improve the research and writing skills of graduate students and subsequently adapted for use in a police executive development program. The method, as well as other programmatic and curricular changes, improved the scholarly quality of the applied research conducted by the participants, enabled police administrators to be better consumers of research, and simultaneously increased the number of individuals completing the research requirement.     

The Influence of Perceived Poverty and Academic Achievement on School Counselor Conceptualization

This analog study presented 173 practicing school counselors with one of four case scenarios depicting a student new to their school. Each scenario manipulated one of two levels of the independent variables, which were perceived poverty and academic achievement. Main effects indicate that participants rated students as more attractive counseling participants when they are perceived as poor and/or strong academic performers. Implications for school counselors and further research are discussed.     

Equity and Empowerment in PDS Work: A Review of Literature (1999 to 2006)

In this paper we examine the degree to which recent research and writing about professional development school activity indicates progress toward fulfilling the professional development school model's commitment to providing equitable educational opportunities and outcomes, especially from a critical pedagogy perspective. Our review of 95 papers and articles from 1999 to 2006 found little published evidence of even a rhetorical commitment to equitable pedagogy and student outcomes. In those cases where equity was mentioned as a factor, it was nearly always in terms only of improved test scores, with no mention of the empowerment of students, teachers, or community.     

Teaching Soft Skills Employers Need

This study identifies the soft skills community colleges teach in an office technology course and determines whether the skills taught are congruent with the soft skills employers require in today's entry-level office work. A qualitative content analysis of a community college office technology soft skills course was performed using 23 soft skills employers require for entry-level office work. Nine of the 16 colleges in the South Carolina Technical College System were teaching an office technology soft skills course in 2007–2008, and they provided course content for analysis. Data determined that the skills taught in the office technology soft skills course are by vast majority congruent with the soft skills employers require in today's entry-level office work.