Pre-service teachers' dispositions towards diversity: Arguing for a developmental hierarchy of change

This article explores Australian pre-service teachers' beliefs about and attitudes towards diversity. Building on Garmon's [Garmon, M. A. (2004). Changing preservice teachers' attitudes/beliefs about diversity: what are the critical factors? Journal of Teacher Education, 55(3), 201–213] argument that there are three dispositional factors that influence students' likelihood of developing multicultural awareness and sensitivity in teacher education programmes, the authors explore the relationship between such dispositions as exhibited in students' autoethnographic work. In so doing, the authors posit that these dispositions may be hierarchically developed: beginning from ‘self-awareness/self-reflectiveness’; moving towards ‘openness’; and finally a ‘commitment to social justice’. After exploring the nature of this hierarchical development through the in-depth investigation of six representative student accounts, the paper concludes by discussing the implications for teacher education, including the necessity to adjust our expectations of changing the dispositions of pre-service teachers in discrete, short courses.     

Ancient covering plaster mortars from several convents and Islamic and Gothic palaces in Palma de Mallorca (Spain). Analytical characterisation

Analysis of historic mortars including Islamic, Gothic and later ones taken from palaces, convents and mansions in Palma de Mallorca has been carried out. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled to energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDX), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques were used to characterise the morphology and analytical composition of the samples analysed. Generally, covering plaster mortars presented a low percentage of small size aggregate. The reported results show that mixed and lime mortars have been used, thus, the establishment of a relationship between the type of mortar employed and its age is not feasible. In the painted mortars, polychromy has also been studied. The most common pigments to be found are natural earths.     

One decade of environmental education research in Brazil: trajectories and trends in three national scientific conferences (ANPEd,ANPPAS and EPEA)

Abstract

This article discusses the scientific research work on environmental education presented during the last decade in three Brazilian conferences: the meetings of the National Association of Graduate Research on Education (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação, ANPEd), the National Association of Graduate Research on Environment and Society (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ambiente e Sociedade, ANPPAS), and the Environmental Education Research Meetings (Encontros de Pesquisa em Educação Ambiental, EPEA). It analyzes the authors, institutions, and regions whence the studies came from, as well as their main research subjects. Our findings indicate the prevalence of women in all academic degree segments; of PhD holders and candidates; of professors in public higher education institutions located in the Brazilian Southwest and South regions; and of environmental education in formal teaching as the main subject in all three conferences. Based on these results, we discuss how this body of research relates to the development of Brazilian academic and educational policies, and indicate some of the challenges involved in building a research tradition in this field, in close dialogue with the arduous political and pedagogical path of environmental education in Brazilian schools.     

Torrance Test of Creative Thinking: The question of its construct validity

Some cognitive dimensions are internationally considered by psychologists to describe and to assess creativity. For example, (Guilford, P. (1976). Creatividad y Educación. Buenos Aires. Ed. Paidos) and (Torrance, E. P. (1977). Discovery and nurturance of giftedness in the culturally different. Reston, VA: Council on Exceptional Children) suggested fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration are the main cognitive processes used to define and assess creativity. However, data from several empirical studies did not confirm a factor structure in accordance with such cognitive functions, despite of the wide use of TTCT (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) in different countries. In this paper, we present new data collected in Spain and Portugal with TTCT. According to our data, those cognitive functions supposedly present on a subject's performance are not so strong as to explain the variance in scores. Elaboration factors assume some variance explanation, but the main factors are identified with the products in each subtest, suggesting the importance of format, content and demand on TTCT specific tasks. Consequently, we suggest some reflections to amplify the debate concerning the definition of creativity and its evaluation in psychology.     

The C3 Framework: Evaluating Classroom Response System Interactions in University Classrooms

The larger the classroom, the more likely is it that communications consist of a one-way flow from the instructor to students. Classroom Response Systems (CRSs) are frequently hailed as technologies capable of improving communications by opening the space for dialogic engagement; yet, a causal relationship is not documented in the literature. The data reported on here stem from a mixed methodology study and provide insights into motivations for CRS use and enacted CRS use across disciplines, as well as student and instructor perceptions of the tool’s effects on teaching and learning. From these data emerged a framework of interaction (the C³ Framework) that situates CRS use from both the instructors’ and learners’ perspectives. The framework consists of an interdependent relationship between Concerns, Centeredness, and Control of discourse. Although this study took place in university classrooms, the C³ Framework presented here applies across educational settings.     

Building Legal Competency: Foundations for a More Effective Criminology and Criminal Justice Discipline

This article argues for the need to build legal competency in the discipline of criminal justice and criminology through incorporating law courses in its PhD program curriculum, whether as black letter law (i.e. criminal law, criminal procedure, courts), sociology of law, or socio-legal studies (i.e. law and society courses). Through requiring law courses as a necessary and integral part of the curriculum, and recognizing the mainstream impact of these courses, the discipline stands to enrich the field of legal studies in criminology and criminal justice. The discipline’s need and demand for law trained tenure track faculty with PhD credentials can only be met through consistent law course offerings.     

Responding to external accountability in high-performing,high-capacity public secondary schools in Chile

The qualitative study on which this article reports explored how senior leaders, mathematics and Spanish language teachers (N = 72) in four high-performing, high-poverty, public secondary schools in Chile enact performance-based accountability policies related to standardised assessments. These four public schools were selected because prior to when the study was conducted all were part of the Bicentennial Schools Programme led by the Ministry of Education from 2010 to 2014. The aim of the programme was to develop effective secondary schools to serve low-income students. A thematic analysis of data produced through individual and group interviews and observations of departmental meetings shows that the enactment of performance-based accountability involved two dimensions of learning-centred leadership, distributed among senior leaders and department heads. An aim shared by parents, students, teachers and senior leaders was to ensure students' access to, and completion of, studies in higher education. Attaining good scores in national standardised SIMCE tests was key to meeting the vision. Collective trust among all actors and macro level trust in standardised testing served as a resource for strong collaboration to improve instruction and learning as well as teachers' collective efficacy. The discussion focuses on school-level practices and policy-level decisions that create conditions for the effective use of information produced from standardised assessments. A key point supported by our findings is that successful performance in external assessments is resourced by, and fosters, trust formation in schools.     

Women students in engineering in Mexico: exploring responses to gender differences

The percentage of women students in engineering in Mexico is still low compared to the percentage of women enrolled in higher education institutions in the country, which has achieved parity with male enrollment. It is thus important to understand how gender can shape the experiences of female college students in engineering programs, which was the focus of this study. Findings for this study are presented in two sections. We first describe how female students have an extra burden dealing with the possibility that their performance might confirm the stereotype of female inferiority in math and science and that they may be judged according to that stereotype. Secondly, we describe the challenges faced by female students in engineering colleges in Mexico, namely, a demanding academic curriculum, and competitive and individualistic environment. This study illustrates how successful female students negotiated the gendered expectations in engineering in Mexican engineering programs, and how they use resistance strategies like academic success to become accepted in the male-dominated engineering environment.