The participation of Australian Indigenous students in higher education: a scoping review of empirical research, 2000–2016

While access to higher education has increased for Indigenous Australians, participation and completion rates remain lower than those of non-Indigenous Australians. A sound evidence base is needed to ground equity initiatives if they are to address the specific needs of Indigenous students. This paper presents the results of a scoping review of empirical research focusing on the participation of Indigenous students in higher education. The purpose of the scoping review was to synthesise empirical research on aspirations for, and barriers and enablers to, higher education that were published between 2000 and 2016 (n = 57), and identify areas where further research is needed. Despite a recent increase in research on this topic, relatively little attention has been paid to Indigenous students’ aspirations while they are at school. We argue that future research should take account of school students’ aspirations for higher education, including primary school students; the similitude of barriers and enablers across the student life cycle; differences within Indigenous community and among Indigenous students; and, the insights emerging from Indigenous methodologies and scholarship.     

Language codes and sense-making among deaf schoolchildren

There are at least two languages (American Sign Language [ASL], English) and three modalities (sign, speech, print) in most deaf individuals' lives. Mixing of ASL and English in utterances of deaf adults has been described in various ways (pidgins, diglossia, language contact, bilingualism), but children's mixing usually is treated as the 'fault' of poor input language. Alternatively, how might language mixing serve their communication goals? This article describes code variations and adaptations to particular situations. Deaf children were seen to exhibit a wide variety of linguistic structures mixing ASL, English, Spanish, signing, and speaking. Formal lessons supported a recoding of English print as sign and speech, but the children who communicated English speech were the two who could hear speech. The children who communicated ASL were those who had deaf parents communicating ASL or who identified with deaf houseparents communicating ASL. Most language produced by the teacher and children in this study was mixed in code and mode. While some mixing was related to acquisition and proficiency, mixing, a strategy of many deaf individuals, uniquely adapts linguistic resources to communication needs. Investigating deaf children's language by comparing it to standard English or ASL overlooks the rich strategies of mixing that are central to their communication experience.     

Professional ethics education for future teachers: A narrative review of the scholarly writings

This article provides a narrative review of the scholarly writings on professional ethics education for future teachers. Against the background of a widespread belief among scholars working in this area that longstanding and sustained research and reflection on the ethics of teaching have had little impact on the teacher education curriculum, the article takes stock of the field by synthesizing viewpoints on key aspects of teaching ethics to teacher candidates—the role ethics plays in teacher education, the primary objectives of ethics education for teachers, recommended teaching and learning strategies, and challenges to introducing ethics curriculum—and maps out how opinions on these matters have evolved over the three decades since the initial publication of Strike and Soltis’ seminal book, The Ethics of Teaching. In light of the review’s results, the article identifies critical deficits in this literature and proposes a set of recommendations for future inquiry.     

Do grades contaminate student evaluations of instruction?

The correlation between grades and student satisfaction has been interpreted as providing support for belief in a grading leniency bias hypothesis. That is, easy graders are assumed to receive better evaluations than hard gradersbecause they are easy graders. Howard and Maxwell have demonstrated that the relationship between grades and satisfaction might be viewed as an expected result of important causal relationships of other variables (student motivation and progress in the course) with satisfaction and grades, rather than simply evidence of contamination due to grading leniency. Eighty-three students in a research methodology course provided data at two points in a semester. Cross-lagged panel correlation analysis was employed to ascertain the direction of casuality in the relationship between student satisfaction and grades. The findings replicate the Howard and Maxwell path analytic results in finding no evidence that a grades-influencing-satisfaction interpretation is more likely than its opposite, namely, a satisfaction-causing-grades one. The weak relationship between grades and student satisfaction, and the study's inability to find evidence to impugn a satisfaction-causing-grades interpretation of that relationship, renders the grade contamination objection to student evaluations even less poignant.     

Supporting and inhibiting the well‐being of early career secondary school teachers: Extending self‐determination theory

This paper reports an original examination of the well‐being of early career secondary school teachers in England, which extends the evidence bases relating to early career teachers’ working lives, teacher well‐being, self‐determination theory and performativity, respectively. Drawing on a secondary analysis of qualitative data generated for four separate empirical studies between 2005 and 2013, in a context in which teachers’ work was subject to unparalleled external regulation, the authors examine the extent to which the well‐being of early career teachers can be explained by self‐determination theory, which posits that well‐being is enhanced when innate psychological needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy are satisfied. The findings suggest that satisfaction of these three basic psychological needs is a necessary but not sufficient condition for optimising the well‐being of early career teachers, which is dependent upon the interaction of a wider range of individual, relational and micro‐, meso‐ and macro‐environmental factors. Amongst the recommendations for policy and practice, policymakers and school leaders are urged to uphold their duty of care to newly and recently qualified teachers by doing their utmost to create conditions for the optimisation of such teachers' well‐being. Several specific means of bringing this about are proposed, together with a checklist for those concerned to support the well‐being of early career teachers.     

On the generality of conditioned bradycardia in rabbits: Assessment of CS and US modality

To determine whether the magnitude of heart rate (HR) slowing induced by classical conditioning contingencies is comparable under a broad range of stimulus conditions, experiments were conducted in which rabbits were exposed to tones, increases in illumination, or vibratory stimuli as conditioned stimuli (CSs) and in which paraorbital electric shocks, corneal airpuffs, or intraoral pulses of water served as unconditioned stimuli (USs). The results indicated that conditioned bradycardia was elicited by all three CSs. Moreover, when a corneal airpuff served as the US, small but reliable CS-evoked HR decelerations also occurred. Finally, CS-evoked HR slowing also occurred in response to a tone CS employed in an appetitive task, in which water was the US. These findings suggest that HR slowing is a general phenomenon that occurs when rabbits are exposed to signals that systematically predict aversive or appetitive consequences according to a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm.     

Parenting priorities and pressures: furthering understanding of ‘concerted cultivation’

This paper re-examines the purposes of a planned and intentional parenting style – ‘concerted cultivation’ – for different middle-class groups, highlighting that social class fraction, ethnicity, and also individual family disposition, guides understandings of the purposes of enrolling children in particular enrichment activities. We examine how parents and their children engage in extra-curricular activities for instrumental reasons with a view to securing skills, qualities and distinction for the future. Additionally, however, enrichment activities are understood as offering present-day values such as enjoyment, social bonding and purposeful activity. The paper also highlights that current policy and broader commercial discourses call for the increased responsibilisation and intensification of parenting, which means that ‘good’ parents are required to ‘buy into’ extra-curricular activities for their children, with concomitant implications for those whose access to activities is limited by economic circumstance.     

Evaluation approaches for a national ICT initiative: the example of laptops for New Zealand teachers

This paper will highlight the successful evaluation approaches deployed for long-term exploration of the impact of a national policy initiative as well as some of the results and outcomes. An interactive feedback process informed decision-making at the national and local level thereby enhancing both the initiative and its implementation in schools. The integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) into schools has been a focus of a plethora of policy initiatives by governments worldwide for over 20 years. The provision of laptops to teachers is one component of the New Zealand compulsory school sector ICT strategy. The evaluation research design was to use a mixed-methods approach incorporating three yearly cycles of annual nationwide surveys, regional focus groups, and school-based longitudinal case studies. Randomized sampling was used to identify 20% of the available laptop schools as potential participants in the survey. The same schools participated in each of the 3 years. A distinctive feature of this evaluation has been the regular feedback loops between the evaluators and the stakeholders. The stakeholders included the Ministry of Education and laptop suppliers as well as schools, school leaders, and teacher unions. In the current accountability, environment schools are increasingly being asked to participate in evaluation studies. In long-term studies, it is important to establish effective relationships with the schools and the policy-makers and to deploy robust evaluation methodologies. This is essential for both validity and reliability of the findings and the useability and utilization of the findings.     

Differential punishment of other behavior: Effects of pause-dependent shock on variable-interval performance

Three albino rats were exposed to a differential-punishment-of-other-behavior shock schedule superimposed on a variable-interval schedule of food presentation. With this arrangement, failure to barpress for a specified interval since the previous response resulted in delivery of shock. This procedure reliably decreased the number of specified pauses and was accompanied by increases in barpress rates and shifts in the distribution of responses. Subsequent exposure to noncontingent shock produced similar, but quantitatively smaller, changes for two of the three subjects. Training with barpress-dependent shock and reexposure to noncontingent shock further diminished these effects. This study demonstrates that pauses are conditionable units of behavior insofar as they are sensitive to a punishment contingency. In terms of the targeted unit of behavior, the current findings are similar to those obtained with barpress-dependent or interresponse-time-dependent shock schedules and suggest a continuum of response specification.     

The purpose of travel in the cultivation practices of differently positioned parental groups in Israel

ABSTRACT

Travel has become ubiquitous for most social groups as holidaying abroad has become ever cheaper and ecumene. This paper considers how travel can be understood as part of family practices around children’s educations and futures. Drawing on Kaufmann’s concept of motility, we examine how spatial mobility might become a form of cultural capital to reproduce privilege or facilitate social mobility. We generated data on family spatial mobility during the act of international air travel itself, interviewing 22 participants. We argue that spatial mobility and its link to social mobility is differently conceived of by our working, middle, and global middle class families, but that all three seek to use travel overtly as a form of cultivation for their children. This leads us to suggest that international travel may illuminate new ways that social class differentiations and lines of striation are being forged through movements across transnational spaces, offering new insights for education professionals and scholars.