A voice in the wilderness: Meetings as ritual in a cross-cultural context

Drawing on a wider ethnographic study of cross-cultural interaction in a Papua New Guinean tertiary institution, this paper examines the interactions occurring in staff meetings. While the cross-cultural context is important, there are patterns here that are illuminating for all who have participated in meetings in any context. Meetings are framed as ritual: stereotypic, quasi dramatic, repetitive behaviors that persevere and are valued regardless of what is actually achieved. Having access to prestigious forms of knowledge, along with the prerogative to determine which knowledge and discourse types may be legitimately drawn upon in the meeting frame, allows those with power to determine the rules. Perhaps more importantly, it allows them to treat these rules, once normalized, in a more flexible way than less knowledgeable participants. Those who have communication competence, as defined within this frame, not only exercise influence but determine others' ability to do so. Non-participants collude with this in their silence. Collusion sustains existing perceptions of power, knowledge, and competence. If there is a genuine desire for more equitable decision making in meetings, participants might begin by probing the rituals of their meetings.     

Playing for position: education policy,Physical Education and nationalism in Wales

This paper explores the connections between Physical Education, nationalism and citizenship in England and Wales focusing upon how education legislation, in particular the National Curriculum (NC) and Local Management of Schools (LMS), are implicated in the cultural production of ideational differences between and amongst the peoples of England and Wales. As our previous research has centred heavily on the making and implementation of education policy and PE in England, we take this opportunity to adjust our gaze and focus squarely on issues of cultural production in Wales, particularly relationships between the construction of images of Welsh identity and education policy and practice relating to PE and sport in schools. The analysis highlights that tendencies towards a narrow, conservative, cultural restoration are as evident in Wales as they are in England and obstruct progression towards more innovative and progressive ideals.     

Responding to racism at school: Ethnic-racial socialization and the academic engagement of Black and Latinx youth

Guided by the Theory of Racial Socialization in Action (TRSA; Smith-Bynum in press), this study examined observed caregiver-provided ethnic-racial socialization in response to a school-based discriminatory dilemma. Forty-five Black and 36 Latinx caregivers (88% mothers) with low-income and their children (M_age = 11.09, SD = 0.29; 46.3% female) participated in Dallas, Texas from 2018 to 2019. Dyads responded to a hypothetical scenario in which a school counselor makes a discriminatory comment to the child. Results of a factor mixture analysis suggested that caregivers engaged in the dialogue using one of four approaches: Low-engaged, Legacy, Racial Literacy, or High-engaged. Profiles were found to differ significantly by the race/ethnicity and language of caregivers and were associated with youth’s concurrent behavioral engagement (R² = .04).     

Diversity and Mentoring in the Workplace: A Conversation with Belle Rose Ragins

Given projected increases in workplace diversity, an understanding of diversity’s intersection with mentoring is a critical topic in the literature. This article involved an interview with Belle Rose Ragins, one of the world’s leading thinkers on diversity and mentoring in the workplace. After providing an overview of Ragins’ key achievements and contributions to the mentoring literature, the article delved into the interview, which involves four parts: (a) Ragins’ education and early influences; (b) her views on the extant literature as well as insights around future areas for inquiry; (c) her current research interests; and (d) her views on consulting and teaching.     

The application of cognitive learning theory to criminal justice education

Most criminal justice programs began as extensions of vocational technical training courses, but within the last decade they have begun to parallel the liberal arts programs originally proposed. As a result of this reorientation, criminal justice instructors lack many of the instructional methods used by colleagues in other fields. In addition, the dual nature of criminal justice instruction, requiring both experience and theory, places demands on criminal justice instructors that their colleagues may not experience. The field needs an instructional approach that blends the best of the vocational aspects and the theoretical underpinnings. This paper reviews cognitive learning theory, specifically Kolb's experiential learning model. Recommendations are offered for the application of this model to instruction in criminal justice courses.     

Assignments as a Pedagogical Tool in Learning to Teach Science: A Case Study

Fostering student teachers' confidence and competence to teach science in early childhood settings is a complex and challenging task for teacher educators situated in university classrooms. The research reported in this paper is based on an analysis of 3rd-year early childhood student teachers' assignments. The assignment required them to interview young children in order to find out what the children knew about a specified science topic. Three themes emerged from a constant comparison analysis. The first was the artificiality of the situation as constrained by the task. The second was the importance of sound subject knowledge in being able to ask questions of the children that were not misleading or difficult to answer. The third theme encompassed the difficulties associated with engaging young children in meaningful conversations. As a result of this analysis, the assignment task was modified to enable student teachers to work in more pedagogically appropriate and authentic ways.     

The good,the bad and the wiki: Evaluating student‐generated content for collaborative learning

This paper explores the potential for wiki‐type open architecture software to promote and support collaborative learning through the use of student‐created content. It delineates some of the affordances and constraints of wiki software as an open architecture that has the potential to facilitate collaborative learning through community‐focused enquiry. It seeks to promote debate in this key area of development, and highlights some recent key contributions to the developing discourse on social software in what has been termed ‘the architecture of participation’.     

Relationships between student characteristics and self‐, peer and tutor evaluations of oral presentations

There are many influences on how assessors grade themselves and others. Oral presentations are useful for exploring such factors in peer, self‐ and tutor marked assessments, being rapidly completed and assessed, commonly used in HE and very difficult to anonymize. This opportunistic study examined the effects of gender and level of attainment on the triangulation of marks awarded to student presenters. Grades generated by peer assessment were associated more strongly with tutor‐awarded marks than those from self‐assessment. For self‐assessment there was a strong effect of gender (female students undervalued their performance compared with tutor grades). Peer assessment produced higher marks than from tutors, perhaps because of the close‐knit community developed during residential courses. For tutor marks, the greatest variability was at the lower end of the scale, whereas peer assessors were most variable when marking students who self‐evaluated or peer assessed highly. Students awarded a narrower range of marks to peers compared with tutors, but when self‐assessing used a larger range. Presentations by students who admitted to little sleep the night before received lower grades from both peers and tutors, but this was not reflected by self‐assessments, suggesting they were unaware of their poorer performances. Sessions with fewer talks (four rather than seven) reduced the ‘dip’ in marks previously observed in the middle of sessions. Findings are discussed in the context of bias in this mode of assessment.