Mentors for beginning teachers as middle leaders: the messy work of recontextualising

ABSTRACT

Mentors for beginning teachers in schools are often unacknowledged middle leaders in their schools. Through their work with beginning teachers, they not only provide local leadership in their contexts, they influence and shape the work of the next generation of teachers. Government-funded mentor training for the purpose of supporting beginning teachers in Education Queensland schools commenced in 2014 (Queensland Government. [2017]. Mentoring Beginning Teachers. http://education.qld.gov.au/staff/development/employee/teachers/mentoring.html). In Queensland, Australia, over 3000 experienced teachers have completed a two-day professional learning Mentoring Beginning Teacher (MBT) programme. Upon completion, mentors were expected to design and enact a mentoring programme that met the beginning teachers’ needs in their context, using the dialogic mentoring principles they had learned to fulfil the policy goals of increasing the number of beginning teachers transitioning to full registration. This article draws on Bernstein’s ([2000]. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. Revised ed. Rowman & Littlefield) concepts of recontextualisation, and horizontal and vertical discourses of knowledge to understand how mentor teachers negotiated and enacted their roles as middle leaders in schools in diverse schooling contexts.     

Using Delphi Surveying Techniques to Gather Input from Non‐Academics for Development of a Modern Dairy Manufacturing Curriculum

The current face of the dairy manufacturing industry has changed from its traditional conception. Industry emphasis is moving away from traditional dairy products, such as fluid milk, ice cream, and butter, and moving toward yogurts, dairy beverages, and value‐added products incorporating ingredients derived from milk and whey. However, many undergraduate dairy curricula still focus on production of fluid milk and traditional dairy products. In addition, despite the significant production of dairy products in the northwestern United States, there are few universities in the Pacific Northwest that offer courses in dairy products or manufacturing. Washington State Univ. and the Univ. of Idaho have developed a dairy manufacturing option to address these issues. To ensure that the curriculum was in alignment with current industry needs, dairy experts in the Pacific Northwest were asked to provide feedback on the proposed curriculum using a modified Delphi survey. Top industry concerns and desired knowledge and skills in new hires were identified. Survey participants emphasized the importance of including new processing technologies, waste management concepts, sustainability principles, engineering skills, and novel dairy products/ingredients in curriculum coverage. The results of the survey were used to modify the proposed curriculum to more closely address dairy industry needs. Alignment between industry needs and university curricula is vital to promote continued growth, development, and innovation in any industry; universities must be aware of changing needs in industry and modify curricula when necessary to address industry challenges.     

Assessment moderation in an Australian context: processes,practices, and challenges

Moderation is a quality assurance process that plays a central role in the teaching, learning, and assessment cycle in higher education. While there is a growing body of research globally on teaching, learning, and, to a lesser degree, assessment in higher education, the process of moderation of assessment has received even less attention. In a context of heightened accountability and greater transparency in the tertiary sector, the formalising of moderation processes has not been a part of established practice. In light of these changes, the purpose of this qualitative study was to identify and investigate current marking and moderation processes and practices operating within one faculty in a large urban university in eastern Australia to gain insight into the challenges to effective moderation. The findings suggest the need for moderation to be considered holistically as an inherent part of teaching and learning, and the need for ongoing staff development.     

21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigate their initial experiences of contemporary classrooms

In the twenty-first century, teachers’ work has become more complex with high levels of accountability, increased bureaucratic responsibilities and unprecedented levels of public scrutiny. However, teaching fundamentally remains a caring profession, requiring well-developed social skills and emotional labour to successfully engage and motivate students. Teachers need resilience to thrive in these environments of intense and often conflicting pressures. Drawing on a transactional-ecological modelthis qualitative study explored the resilience and teacher identity development of a cohort of pre-service career-change teachers as they navigated their initial experiences in contemporary classrooms. The findings indicate that this cohort arrived to teacher education with teacher identities strongly aligned with a broad conceptualisation of care as active practice. This paper discusses how their identities and capacities for resilience were challenged and reviewed during their classroom experiences and the implications for teacher education and the profession.     

Distributed leadership in a Maltese college: the voices of those among whom leadership is ‘distributed’ and who concurrently narrate themselves as leadership ‘distributors’

In the unfolding Maltese education scenario of decentralization and school networking, I explore distributed leadership as it occurs at the college level through the leaders’ narrative and performance in an investigation of the power relations among the different-tiered leaders. This article uses data from the case study of a Maltese college consisting of four primary and three secondary schools. Using these data from an ongoing doctoral study, all subjected to narrative and discourse analysis, I adopt the stance of a ‘story teller’, as I craft a narrative from the data to represent a ‘play of voices’. Foucault’s theories of power, governmentality, discourse and subjectivation are used to explore the unfolding of power relations. Analysis reveals a dichotomy between the leaders’ narrative of distributed leadership and their performance of it. There is the presence of a raging battle among the discourses of collegiality and isolationism, through the discourse of distributed leadership, and within the discourse of educational leadership itself. Distributed leadership is a challenge to perform at the college level; with resistance being demonstrated in overt or more subtle ways along the different hierarchies, although power does circulate. This article contributes to educational leadership literature with regard to the power relations among top educational leaders in a networked school setting.     

The Gateway Science Workshop Program: Enhancing Student Performance and Retention in the Sciences Through Peer-Facilitated Discussion

Minority student attrition and underachievement is a long-standing and widespread concern in higher education. It is especially acute in introductory science courses which are prerequisites for students planning to pursue science-related careers. Poor performance in these courses often results in attrition of minorities from the science fields. This is a particular concern at selective universities where minority students enter with excellent academic credentials but receive lower average grades and have lower retention rates than majority students with similar credentials. This paper reports the first year results of a large scale peer-facilitated workshop program designed to increase performance and retention in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics at a selective research university. After adjusting for grade point average or SAT-Math score, workshop participants earned higher final grades than nonparticipants in Biology and Chemistry, but not in Physics. Similar effects on retention were found. While, positive effects of the program were observed in both majority and minority students, effect sizes were generally largest for minority students. Because of practical constraints in Physics, implementation of the program was not optimal, possibly accounting for the differential success of the program across disciplines.     

Assessing the self‐esteem of female undergraduate students: an issue of methodology

For many students, embarking on higher education can pose particular threats and challenges, not only to academic identity, but also to fundamental, personal aspects of the self. This paper reports a methodological study that employed quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore the impact on the sense of self and self‐esteem of a group of female first‐year undergraduates. Results from a Self‐esteem inventory, a variation on Q Methodology, an Ideal‐self inventory and a semi‐structured interview revealed different but complementary aspects of the self and indicated that participants’ self‐esteem increased over the duration of the study, as recorded on all four measures. It is suggested that the most appropriate way of uncovering and understanding mediators of self‐esteem may be through a mixed‐method approach.