Teachers' goal orientations for teaching: Associations with instructional practices,interest in teaching,and burnout

Two studies (one longitudinal) were designed to extend Butler's model of teachers' goal orientations for teaching. In Study 1, results from 281 teachers in Germany confirmed the predicted four-factor model comprising mastery, ability-approach, ability-avoidance, and work-avoidance goal orientations. As expected, mastery orientation and work avoidance emerged as positive and negative predictors, respectively, of adaptive patterns of instruction (mastery-oriented practices and cognitive stimulation) and high interest in teaching and low burnout; associations for both ability orientations were less consistent. In Study 2, 69 Israeli teachers completed the measures of instructional practices, interest in teaching and burnout several months after reporting their goal orientations. Results were very similar to those of Study 1. The two studies confirm that research on teachers' goal orientation is promising and has implications for understanding how teacher motivation might influence both teachers and their students.     

“We Need a Song”: Sustaining Critical Youth Organizing Literacies Through World Humanities

This article intervenes in the long-standing conversations around which youth activism, literacies, and civic engagement take place. In an effort to expand the boundaries of activism to include the work of youth critical literacies within the classroom, this article highlights the work of four female high school students of color as they bring attention to human sex trafficking. Findings show that students are introduced to and given the space to engage in “critical youth organizing literacies” through their class project. Therefore, through similar projects, classrooms become sites where young people learn to select and critique texts in order to mobilize peers and community members.     

Diverse Colleges of Origin of African American Doctoral Recipients, 2001–2005: Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Beyond

The contribution of HBCUs as “colleges of origin,” i.e., where Black doctorates earned their bachelors’ degrees, remains of interest, given the historical role of HBCUs and the current desire to increase the percentage of doctorates awarded to African Americans in all fields. Using national survey data from multiple sources, we estimated which college characteristics predicted later doctoral degree attainment in all fields. We took into account the large number of Black graduates from HBCUs, which make them likely to be colleges of origin, and controlled for standardized test scores, Carnegie classification, and student/faculty ratio. HBCUs were associated with doctorate production more than twice the expected level based on their other average characteristics. In addition, colleges with low student/faculty ratios, higher SAT scores, and historical Carnegie classifications of research universities and selective liberal arts colleges were also associated with a higher percentage of Black graduates later earning doctoral degrees.     

Career and workplace experiences of Australian university graduates who are deaf or hard of hearing

This article reports on the experiences of a group of deaf and hard-of-hearing alumni of Griffith University in south-east Queensland, Australia. Participants completed a survey answering questions about their communication patterns and preferences, working lives, career barriers or difficulties anticipated and encountered, and workplace accommodations used or sought. Results revealed a range of career barriers and workplace difficulties encountered by these participants, as well as solutions found and strategies used by them. Differences in employment sector, job-search activities, difficult workplace situations, and use of accommodations were noted between 2 groups: those who communicated primarily in Australian Sign Language and considered themselves to have a Deaf or bicultural identity and those who communicated primarily in spoken English and considered themselves to have a hearing identity. Implications for university services supporting deaf and hard-of-hearing students are outlined, and suggestions for further research are made.     

Deaf people communicating via SMS, TTY, relay service, fax, and computers in Australia

Despite the expansion of Deaf people's use of communication technology little is published about how they use electronic communication in their social and working lives and the implications for their concepts of identity and community. Australia is an ideal research base because the use of a range of technologies is widespread there. To gain access to a wide age range of people who identify as Deaf, members of the national organization, the Australian Association of the Deaf, were surveyed by mail. Results showed that Short Message Service (SMS), telephone typewriters (TTY), voice/TTY relay services, fax, and e-mail were used regularly. Deaf users are discerning of the purposes for which they use each method: SMS for social and personal interactions, TTY for longer communications and (via the relay service) with people and services without TTYs, fax for business and social contact, and computers for personal and business e-mails as well as Web browsing, accessing chat rooms, word processing, games, and study.