Coming to Voice: Preparing Bilingual-Bicultural Teachers for Social Justice

This study examined the development of bicultural voice in Latina/o preservice teachers. Researchers used survey, interview, and observational data to probe students' knowledge, beliefs, and orientations related to teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. The researchers found that the bilingual cohort courses afforded students with opportunities to juxtapose personal narratives with broader social contexts, thereby allowing students to examine and critique the ideology and curricula of schools. The authors assert that cultivating social justice orientations in bilingual-bicultural preservice teachers is crucial to the empowerment of bilingual-bicultural teachers and their students.     

“Moving quietly through the door of opportunity”: Perspectives of College Students who Type to Communicate

Colleges and universities across the United States are becoming increasingly diverse. That increased diversity includes students who do not use speech as their primary means of expression. This qualitative study focuses on the experiences and challenges of higher education for individuals with autism who type to communicate using a method known as facilitated communication. This article focuses on the perspectives of these individuals as they make sense of their inclusion in and, at times, exclusion from higher education, particularly their academic and social access. In addition, the findings of this research indicate that while there are structural and classroom supports that are helpful for individuals who type to communicate, their participation and meaningful inclusion is also incumbent on attitudinal factors and how receptive faculty and staff are to the students’ method of communication. While there is still much work to be done in the area of higher education for individuals with more complex needs, this study highlights the promise of higher education for this new population of students.     

Storytelling as dialogue: how teachers construct professional knowledge

This study shows how a group of English language lecturers use storytelling as a form of professional dialogue. The aim of the study is to highlight the dialogic role of storytelling in supporting the construction of lecturers' professional knowledge and not to identify lecturers' professional knowledge. In a professional development project, 12 lecturers created digital stories about their experiences of professional development. These stories were shared with colleagues who then responded with their own digital stories. A narrative framework was used to analyse stories for the types of connections lecturers made between stories. Five dialogic processes were identified: connecting, echoing, developing, questioning and constructing. Excerpts of stories are used to demonstrate how lecturers construct professional knowledge through storytelling. The study concludes by outlining the potential and limitations of storytelling as an approach to professional development and proposes further research into the dialogic capacity of storytelling in a professional development context.     

Students engaging in diversity: blogging to learn the history of jazz

This study examined discursive choices made by the instructor of a Black Studies course in constructing what counted as blogging and the history of jazz; how students showed evidence of meeting the course requirements, and how particular students engaged with issues of race and diversity in their blogs. The instructor required blogging to enable an interactional form of learning that supported development of a writing voice, criticality, and thinking in interdisciplinary ways. Students entered the course having different prior experiences and understandings of jazz and the class format allowed students to move from whatever path they were on to embrace the positive nature of diversity in the creation of culture.     

Enhancing academic work through the synergy between teaching and research

In this paper we explore an approach to academic development that focuses on developing and using research as a means of understanding the complexity of teaching and learning within specific discipline environments. This approach shifts the attention of the academic developer from the enhancement of teaching using traditional methods such as workshops, formal courses, or in‐faculty curriculum and assessment advice, to encouraging and supporting participant research on learning and teaching, and disciplinary‐based research. Focusing on research development gives academics the opportunity to develop their teaching scholarship, prepare publishable work, and cultivate teaching and learning practices that are aligned with their specific discipline environments. We discuss the philosophy of this approach to the enhancement of academic work through the synergy between teaching and research. We illustrate our discussion with some recent examples in which we have used this approach successfully.     

List of Reviewers

Research supervision development often focuses on improving the quality of researcher/student interactions and outcomes. Hence, academic development activity is usually oriented towards the development of individual capacities and practices. More recently, however, the focus has changed to the research enhancement needs of twenty‐first century institutions, recognising them as complex, research‐oriented workplaces. In this paper we present a model of academic development for institutional change which is situated within the framework of complexity theory: we use a case study based on a large‐scale change process to demonstrate our findings. The paper illuminates the position of research‐supervisor education as only one element of a complex system of changes that are necessary to effect sustained improvement in the quality of research and research training.

Le développement de la supervision de recherche se concentre souvent sur l’amélioration de la qualité des interactions entre chercheur et étudiant, ainsi que sur l’amélioration des résultats. Ainsi, les activités de développement pédagogique sont généralement orientées vers le développement de compétences et de pratiques individuelles. Cependant, le centre d’intérêt s’est plus récemment déplacé vers les besoins d’amélioration de la recherche au sein d’institutions du 21e siècle, les reconnaissant du coup comme des lieux de travail complexes, orientés sur la recherche. Dans cet article, nous présentons un modèle du développement pédagogique visant le changement institutionnel, lequel est situé dans le cadre de la théorie de la complexité. De façon à faire la démonstration des résultats, nous faisons appel à une étude de cas qui repose sur un processus de changement à grande échelle. L’article met en lumière le fait que la formation à la supervision de recherche ne constitue qu’un élément au sein d’un système complexe de changements nécessaires à l’amélioration soutenue de la qualité de la recherche et de la formation à la recherche.     

An evaluation of an out-of-school-hours learning project in South Wales

In early 2002, the DfES announced that it intends to relax the National Curriculum for certain sections of the 14 to 19 years school age population to enable less able, disadvantaged and disaffected pupils to be allowed to spend more time on alternative and vocational curriculum initiatives. This article is one of the first to focus on a major out-of-school-hours learning scheme along the lines currently being predicated by the Government. Specifically, this article focuses on the evaluation of the Mountain Ash Partnership Out-of-school-hours Learning Project (MAP) from the pupils' perspective. The MAP Project was supported by a grant of £198,065 from the New Opportunities Fund over a three-year period between 1999 and 2002. Findings support the view that alternative curriculum schemes can significantly change and improve disadvantaged pupils' attitudes towards learning and the way they perceive their schools.     

The National Behaviour and Attendance Review (NBAR) in Wales: findings on school behaviour from the professional perspective

This paper presents the methodology and some of the findings on school behaviour obtained for the National Behaviour and Attendance Review (NBAR) in Wales. This work was undertaken over two years between 2006 and 2008. The Report was widely circulated in Wales to schools, local authorities, health and social service departments, as well as a wide range of professional and voluntary organisations in the autumn of 2008. The Review was written, led and chaired by the author. The Report was presented to the Minister for Children, Lifelong Learning and Skills and the Welsh Assembly Government, who subsequently endorsed the full Report on a cross-party basis. Thereafter, an Implementation Group was established to carry forward the 92 recommendations on attendance, behaviour, parenting, multi-agency working and children and young people. The methodology included both qualitative and quantitative approaches. This paper, however, focuses upon the findings obtained from the professional focus groups located throughout Wales during both Stage One and Stage Two of the review process. The evidence is discussed in context and both the core and supporting recommendations formulated from this approach are presented in the text.