The Aesthetic and Moral Character of Oakeshott's Educational Writings

This article is an investigation of two apparently contradictory impulses in Oakeshott's writings about liberal education. On the one hand, he implied that it was primarily ‘aesthetic’, something undertaken for its own sake with no practical consequences. On the other hand, he often implied that a student might undergo a moral transformation in the process of becoming educated. This article attempts to reconcile both these ideas in Oakeshott's thought, and to show that they are coherent within the German Bildung tradition.     

Should Tougher Basic Skills Requirements Be Viewed as a Means of Strengthening the Teaching Force?

The study assesses the criterion-related validity of one state's set of basic skills requirements for teacher licensure. Though all 186 participants met the basic skills requirements in place when enrolled as teacher education students, the PPST Reading scores of 77 participants and the PPST Mathematics scores of 67 do not meet the state's current requirements. The magnitude of correlations between the participants' basic skills scores and their performance in student teaching provides no criterion-related support for the current requirements, and the correlations involving reading and mathematics raise questions regarding the minimal competency assumption that positive relationships exist between teaching performance and scores below the qualifying levels on basic skills tests.     

Exploring the potential of constructionist therapy: deaf clients, hearing therapists and a reflecting team

This article explores the use of constructionist therapy with a reflecting team of hearing therapists seeing deaf clients. Using findings from two in-depth interviews, postsession reflections and a review of the literature, we propose that this model has the potential to cater to the diversity of the lived experiences of deaf people and also to address issues of power and tensions between medical, social, and cultural models of deafness. The interviews found there was real value in sharing multiple perspectives between the reflecting team of hearing therapists and these deaf clients. In addition, the clients reported feeling safe and comfortable with this model of counseling. Other information that emerged from the interviews supports previous findings regarding consistency in interpreting and the importance of hearing therapists having an understanding of the distinctions between Deaf and hearing worlds. As the first investigation of its kind in Australia, this article provides a map for therapists to incorporate reflecting teams with interpreters, deaf clients, and hearing therapists. The value of this article also lies in providing a much needed platform for future research into counseling outcomes and the efficacy of this constructionist model of therapy.     

Parental Plurilingual Capital in a Monolingual Context: Investigating Strengths to Support Young Children in Early Childhood Settings

Parents who are plurilingual have a portfolio of assets they can use to support the language development of their children. This portfolio of assets is positioned as a strength that parents bring into their partnership with early childhood educators. However, not all parents who are plurilingual have the same assets in their language portfolios. Our study, using case studies of parents who have multiple languages and a desire to raise their children with more than one language, demonstrates that previous parental experiences with multiple languages, and intra-familial support for multiple languages combine to impact on parental language strengths and the expectations parents have of early childhood professionals. To build effective partnerships with parents, early childhood professionals need to understand the assets in parental language portfolios.