Field News

Abstract

The recent (1990) establishment of a new campus of the University of Washington at Tacoma (UWT) has led to the development of an upper-division environmental curriculum within an interdisciplinary arts and sciences framework. All of the natural sciences at UWT were founded under the rubric of environmental science, which was integrated with a range of other disciplines' perspectives on the environment, to form a more comprehensive environmental education program. The community-oriented mission, evolving structure, and flexibility of this relatively new urban commuter campus allowed the authors to create a multitiered environmental education program that broadly integrates environmental issues into interdisciplinary undergraduate education and is consistent with national and international environmental education goals. In this study, the authors compare the curricula developed at UWT with other new and established environmental programs nationally.     

Imagining a profession: a beginning teacher's story of isolation

Policy documents informing the profession of teaching in Australia and elsewhere explicitly recommend nurturing those new to the profession working collaboratively with colleagues. Key to the development and growth of beginning teachers is the informal exchange of ideas and knowledge between colleagues – essentially through the functioning of a community of practice. In practice there are beginning teachers who do not experience productive professional collaborations. In this article we use positioning theory and discourse analysis as a methodological “hearing aid” to listen to the story of a beginning teacher, a global English speaker, as she tells of her personal experiences of being excluded by her colleagues as she begins teaching at her first school. Speakers of global English are defined, for this research, as those for whom English is not their first language but may be one of many spoken languages. This story reflects similar accounts gathered during a larger research study conducted by the authors that focused on the early career experiences of global English speaking teachers. We conclude with suggestions for ways forward through awareness and practical reforms.     

Journal writing as a way to know culture: insights from a travel study abroad program

In this work, we explore journal writing as a way to come to know culture, particularly cultural phenomenon, vastly different from one’s own firmly held and enacted beliefs. In this research, we accept the premise that writing is a way of knowing and adopt journal writing as a tool through which students can explore the knowledge they have developed as a result of their academic travel study experiences, all being participants in the China Study Abroad Program. Narrative threads from numerous graduate students’ journals are seamed together through the use of narrative inquiry’s analytical tools. The narrative exemplars that were created reinforce the personal, social, and professional importance of creating a reflective writing space through which many expressions of culture and students’ reflective responses to them can be channeled in productive and potentially transformative ways.     

Illuminating qualities of knowledge communities in a portfolio‐making context

This article connects teachers’ experiences of reflective school portfolio development to the idea of teachers’ knowledge communities, the different groups and individuals with whom teachers negotiate meaning for their stories of experience, lived and told, and re‐lived and re‐told, over time. The reflective analysis makes the case that the development of a dynamic knowledge community among teachers is foundational to the successful reflective school portfolio‐making experience. Critically important links between these two phenomena are established by laying texts from school portfolio development meetings alongside the qualities that distinguish teachers’ knowledge communities. In the end result, the research presents a fine‐grained account of teachers actively working in a group situation, contributing to their individual and collective professional development. As such, this article adds to the teacher development and reflective portfolio literatures.     

Special and inclusive education in the Eastern Caribbean: policy practice and provision

The countries of the Eastern Caribbean have for more than a decade been committed to the implementation of a common educational reform strategy. At the heart of this strategy has been the policy of 'education for all', which includes establishing educational support services for children with special educational needs. In the past, many disabled children and children with learning difficulties have been excluded from the education system in these countries. For many more children, attendance at school has not given meaningful access to educational opportunities. This article discusses research carried out by the authors and reports on the implementation of the Reform Strategy and on the barriers to inclusive education that persist in the region.     

Modeling Ethical Thinking: Toward New Interpretive Practices in the Art Museum

Abstract One of the key challenges for the art museum today is how to make the discourses and interpretive repertoires that constitute art both visible and available to the public. Rising to this challenge requires a shift in the way the museum both imagines and carries out its interpretive responsibilities. This essay argues that such a shift is taking shape around the question of how to model ethical thinking in the art museum. Ethical thinking helps people (both museum visitors and staff) to make links between thinking and action: between beliefs (morals) and actions (ethics).     

Motivations,Sacrifices, and Challenges: Black Parents’ Decisions to Home School

This study examines home schooling among Black parents by providing insight to Black families’ beliefs, concerns, and desires for their children’s education. To date, the literature remains void of empirical work related to home education among African American families. However, the present study directly addresses this void. Findings demonstrated that parents’ motivations to home school included issues related to race and home-school interaction. In addition, Black parents reported that religious beliefs influenced their decisions to home school. But, unlike their Caucasian counterparts, Black home educators described a more liberatory form of religion.     

Counselor Educator Mothers: A Quantitative Analysis of Job Satisfaction

The authors examined the occupational satisfaction of 107 counselor educator mothers and found that work‐to‐family enrichment, support from colleagues, and number of children under age 6 were significant predictors of occupational satisfaction. These results underscore the importance of policies and programs to increase occupational satisfaction of academic mothers and to support their recruitment and retention.     

Chat reference service in medical libraries: part 1--An introduction

Chat reference services offer the opportunity to provide immediate access to quality information to meet the medical information needs of students, faculty, staff, physicians, nurses, and allied health care professionals. Part 1 of this two-part article on chat reference service in medical libraries is an introduction to the management of chat reference services and to features available for chat reference. The management of chat reference services raises issues of planning, staffing, selecting, and marketing. Planning issues focus on the identification of the users, the users' medical information needs, and the users' information-seeking behavior. Staffing issues relate to the selection of chat hours, the location of the chat service, and participation in collaborative agreements. Selecting chat software weighs the sophistication of the chat features against the related cost. Marketing uses techniques similar to traditional reference services and often begins slowly as chat expertise develops. Part 2 of the article discusses trends in chat reference services in medical libraries.