Metaphor as a methodological tool: identifying teachers’ social justice dispositions across diverse secondary school settings

This article investigates the social justice dispositions of teachers and principals in secondary schools as inferred from their metaphoric expressions. Drawing on a Bourdieuian account of disposition, our focus is the use of metaphor as a methodological tool to identify and reveal these otherwise latent forces within our data. Our analysis shows evidence of redistributive, recognitive and activist conceptions of social justice. We argue that these three social justice dispositions may be insufficient to meaningfully address persisting inequalities in the school system and that a capability-based social justice disposition – absent in our data – is needed. We conclude by highlighting that: social justice dispositions can change; a valid interpretation of metaphors requires ‘contextual stabilization’; and metaphors for social justice are differently constructed in different contexts, influenced by the different social, cultural and material conditions of schools.     

A Model Food Entrepreneur Assistance and Education Program: The Northeast Center for Food Entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT: The Northeast Center for Food Entrepreneurship (NECFE) is a collaborative effort between Cornell Univ. and the Univ. of Vermont. NECFE uses a multi-institutional and regional collaboration approach, with specific expertise and necessary facilities and resources, to provide technical assistance and education for businesses in the food industry. The overall goals of NECFE are to support and sustain rural businesses and promote sustainable economic development of rural communities. Through process evaluation techniques, the evaluators of NECFE identified 5 essential components of a model food entrepreneurship assistance and education center, based on NECFE's experience: (1) multi-institutional and regional collaboration, (2) expertise, (3) facilities and resources, (4) services, and (5) evaluation of the center. These components build on each other and enable NECFE to provide clients with access to current food processing technology, technical information, and education that are directly applicable to a real business. Through replication of this model, other organizations and academic institutions may establish a regional food entrepreneurship assistance and education center.     

The Diverse Risk Profiles of Persistently Absent Primary Students: Implications for Attendance Policies in Australia

ABSTRACT

The risk factors associated with absenteeism are well known. However, children's exposure to combinations of risks and how these relate to absence patterns remains unclear. Understanding variations in risk profiles among persistently non-attending children will inform the development of absence interventions. Using a longitudinal sample of Australian children (6–11 years), a latent class analysis of 19 risks identified four classes of risk exposure. Most children (56%) were exposed to minimal risk, 20% were exposed to parenting, child development, and mental health risks only, 15% were exposed to a greater extent to financial risks only, and 9% had a higher probability of exposure to all risks. Persistently non-attending children were eight times more likely to be in the high-risk group than regular attenders. However, one-third of persistent non-attenders were classified as low-risk. The heterogeneity of risk profiles is discussed in relation to policies using financial penalties to motivate improved attendance.     

Maternal Responsiveness to Infants in Three Societies: The United States, France, and Japan

This study examines and compares prominent characteristics of maternal responsiveness to infant activity during home-based naturalistic interactions of mother-infant dyads in New York City, Paris, and Tokyo. Both culture-general and culture-specific patterns of responsiveness emerged. For example, in all 3 locales infants behaved similarly, mothers also behaved similarly with respect to a hierarchy of response types, and mothers and infants manifest both specificity and mutual appropriateness in their interactions: Mothers responded to infants' exploration of the environment with encouragement to the environment, to infants' vocalizing nondistress with imitation, and to infants' vocalizing distress with nurturance. Differences in maternal responsiveness among cultures occurred to infant looking rather than to infant vocalizing and in mothers' emphasizing dyadic versus extradyadic loci of interaction. Universals of maternal responsiveness, potential sources of cultural variation, and implications of similarities and differences in responsiveness for child development in different cultural contexts are discussed.     

Three reflections on assessing safety training needs: A case study

Needs assessment plays an important role in training and human performance improvement efforts, but the literature contains little research on this topic. This study extended previous research on the Performance Analysis for Training (PAT) model of needs assessment by examining its implementation to determine environmental and occupational health and safety training needs in a government agency. Using case study methodology and the lens of responsive evaluation, this study resulted in three perspectives about the actual needs assessment implementation. The three professionals' distinct areas of expertise (evaluation, health and safety, human resource development) informed the case in unique ways. The results can be used to improve the PAT model and also to give human resource development and performance improvement professionals insights about nuances of needs assessment practice.     

Teacher supervision and evaluation challenges: Canadian perspectives on overall instructional leadership

This inquiry focuses on the overall instructional leadership approaches used by exemplary principals in three high performing Canadian provinces to overcome three persistent obstacles to effective teacher supervision and evaluation: (a) the management challenge, (b) the complexity challenge, and (c) the learning challenge. Analysis of data collected from interviews, focus groups, observations, field notes, documents, artifacts, and reflective research journals yielded the following four assertions: (a) Shared, distributed, and collective approaches to overall instructional leadership deepen and widen impact. (b) Effective supervision and evaluation are part of a career-long continuum of practice that fosters teacher growth while ensuring quality teaching. (c) There are multiple learning pathways to effective overall instructional leadership. (d) Policy contexts that place teacher supervision and evaluation practice within a broader conception of overall instructional leadership are beneficial.     

Proportional Reasoning among 7th Grade Students with Different Curricular Experiences

Contextual problems involving rational numbers and proportional reasoning were presented to seventh grade students with different curricular experiences. There is strong evidence that students in reform curricula, who are encouraged to construct their own conceptual and procedural knowledge of proportionality through collaborative problem solving activities, perform better than students with more traditional, teacher-directed instructional experiences. Seventh grade students, especially those who study the new curricula, are capable of developing their own repertoire of sense-making tools to help them to produce creative solutions and explanations. This is demonstrated through analysis of solution strategies applied by students to a variety of rate problems.     

Preadolescent Friendship and Peer Rejection as Predictors of Adult Adjustment

Although peer-rejected children appear to be at risk for later difficulties, the contribution of preadolescent friendship to adaptive adjustment lacks an empirical foundation. In this 12 year follow-up investigation, 30 young adults who had a stable, reciprocal best friend in fifth grade and 30 who had been chumless completed measures of adjustment in multiple domains. Friendship and peer rejection were found to have unique implications for adaptive development. Lower levels of preadolescent peer rejection uniquely predicted overall life status adjustment, whereas friended preadolescents had higher levels of general self-worth in adulthood even after controlling for perceived competence in preadolescence. In contrast, peer rejection and the absence of friendship were both associated with psychopathological symptoms in adulthood, although neither was uniquely predictive of symptomatology.     

Access to Educational and Instructional Computer Technologies for Post‐secondary Students with Disabilities: lessons from three empirical studies

Access issues based on three Canadian empirical studies of the use of computer and information technologies by college and university students with physical, sensory, and learning disabilities are presented. Data were obtained between fall 1997 and spring 1999 from: (1) focus groups with students with disabilities (n = 12); (2) structured interviews with students with disabilities (a = 37) and with post‐secondary personnel responsible for providing services to them (n = 30); (3) questionnaires completed by post‐secondary students with disabilities (n= 725). Findings indicate that the overwhelming majority of students with disabilities use computers and the Internet, but that 41 % of them need some type of adaptation to use computers effectively. Key findings emphasize advantages of computer technologies and delineate barriers to full access. Types of computer, information and adaptive technologies used by students with different disabilities are presented and emerging trends are highlighted. The goal is (1) to sensitize educational and instructional technologists, professors and planners involved in the implementation of educational media into post‐secondary education curricula and (2) to demonstrate that designing for accessibility from the outset creates a more equitable learning environment that provides opportunities for all students