Professional standards for teachers: a case study of professional learning

This paper analyses the current Australian policy and research context in relation to developing quality teachers. Like other countries, many educational authorities in Australia are developing professional standards for teachers and the evaluation of teachers against those standards as a mechanism for ensuring and extending the quality of teaching in schools. A key policy consideration involves the use of professional standards as tools for extending professional learning and/or for credentialing and appraisal. This paper considers these uses of standards by drawing on an evaluation of Education Queensland's Professional Standards for Teachers pilot. The pilot focused on using a set of standards as a framework for professional learning. Teachers' perspectives on the standards and their intended use, their engagement with the standards during the pilot and the nature of professional learning associated with that engagement are discussed in light of current policy debates about professional standards.     

Working with Boys

The author, a Special Educational Needs Co‐ordinator in an inner city primary school in North London describes an Equal Opportunities project that involved working with boys in a single sex group. The project sought to address theoretical concerns around sex stereotyping, peer group hierarchies and the greater level of alienation from the educational system boys seem to experience at primary stage. The article evaluates the effectiveness of the project to raise awareness and support change in relation to a number of significant issues — racism, sexism, bullying and collaborative group processes.     

Self‐directed learning in gross human anatomy: Assessment outcomes and student perceptions

Speech pathology students enrolled in a lecture‐based gross human anatomy program completed two out of nine topics in self‐directed mode. Student performance in quizzes was compared for the two modes, and the students completed questionnaires on their perceptions of the self‐directed mode of delivery. Students performed as well in the first self‐directed topic as they did in lecture‐based material, but performance declined significantly on the second self‐directed topic. Correlations showed that students who performed well in lecture‐based topics also performed well on self‐directed topics. The major issues that arose in the student questionnaires were primarily related to the amount of content in the topics and the length of time required for completion. We conclude that there is a strong need for appropriate design of distance education materials to reflect student perceptions of length, content, and time investment, and more importantly that there is a need to ensure extensive communication and support of students studying in distance education/self‐directed modes for the first time. Anat Sci Ed 2008. © 2008 American Association of Anatomists.     

Quality of Prekindergarten: What Families Are Looking for in Public Sponsored Programs

This study describes the meaning of program quality for a representative group of parents of children enrolled in public prekindergarten programs. Educators often conceptualized quality in terms of structural or process indicators; parents most often cited teacher experience and relationship to children. Families, like educators, emphasized enhancing readiness as central to program quality. In addition, families identified 3 classes of indicators not usually included in educational research or professional discussions of program quality: comprehensive service provision, convenient location, and home-school collaboration. In the decision to enroll children in a program, Whites more often relied on indicators of the classroom emotional climate, Latinos more often examined the provision of comprehensive services, and African Americans more often weighed the quality of home-school partnerships than their ethnic counterparts. For Latinos living in poverty, the concern about dual language development was salient. African Americans emphasized the importance of a close relationship with staff.     

Measures of classroom quality in prekindergarten and children's development of academic, language, and social skills

This study examined development of academic, language, and social skills among 4-year-olds in publicly supported prekindergarten (pre-K) programs in relation to 3 methods of measuring pre-K quality, which are as follows: (a) adherence to 9 standards of quality related to program infrastructure and design, (b) observations of the overall quality of classroom environments, and (c) observations of teachers' emotional and instructional interactions with children in classrooms. Participants were 2,439 children enrolled in 671 pre-K classrooms in 11 states. Adjusting for prior skill levels, child and family characteristics, program characteristics, and state, teachers' instructional interactions predicted academic and language skills and teachers' emotional interactions predicted teacher-reported social skills. Findings suggest that policies, program development, and professional development efforts that improve teacher–child interactions can facilitate children's school readiness.     

Inter-Relations Between Ethnic-Racial Discrimination and Ethnic-Racial Identity Among Early Adolescents

The authors examined whether the longitudinal inter-relations between ethnic-racial discrimination and ethnic-racial identity vary according to the perpetrator of discrimination. The authors used three waves of data from early adolescents (n = 387; ages 11–12 at Wave 1) to assess the strength and direction of relations between perceived discrimination from non-school adults and peers vis-à-vis ethnic-racial identity exploration, commitment, private regard, and public regard. Cross-lagged autoregressive path analyses showed that more frequent discrimination, regardless of source, had reciprocal and significant longitudinal inter-relations with exploration and public regard. Peer discrimination predicted lower commitment and private regard 1 year later, whereas non-school adult discrimination did not. Implications are discussed in relation to the role of peers and ethnic-racial identity processes.     

Grammar and Its Teaching： Challenging the Myths

Grammar is often misunderstood in the language teaching field.The misconception lies in the view that grammar is a collection of arbitrary rules about static structures in the lan- guage.Further questionable claims are that the structures do not have to be taught,learners will acquire them on their own, or if the structures are taught,the lessons that ensue will be boring.Consequently,communicative and proficiency-based     

Implications from self-efficacy and attribution theories for an understanding of undergraduates’ motivation in a foreign language course

Although studies on self-efficacy and attribution have independently contributed to the motivation literature, these two constructs have rarely been considered together in the domain of foreign language learning. Here, 500 undergraduates in Spanish, German, and French courses were asked to report whether test scores represented a successful or unsuccessful outcome and to provide attribution and self-efficacy ratings upon receiving their grades. Representing an innovation over previous studies, attributions were measured in two ways, using dimensions of attributions and asking about actual reasons for a real outcome. In regressions predicting achievement, self-efficacy was the strongest predictor, supplemented by ability attributions. Students who attributed failure to lack of effort had higher self-efficacy than students not making effort attributions.