Reflection on their first five years of teaching: understanding staying and impact power

Teacher turnover in urban schools is occurring at a breakneck pace; thus, it is important for us to understand the characteristics of teachers who stay and succeed in these settings. In order to address this need, this study examines the preparation and induction experiences of teachers who completed a Transition to Teaching – a funded urban apprenticeship program. Three research questions guided the study: (1) How do participants describe the characteristics that influence their five-year retention? (2) How do participants describe their success as teachers? and (3) How do participants describe the professional support they received in their preparation program and during the subsequent four years after completing the program? Quantitative and qualitative data via interviews, focus group, and an examination of teachers’ district performance scores were utilized, as a means of understanding teachers’ staying and impact power. Staying power refers to the ability to endure or last within challenging contexts by possessing strength enough to persevere. Impact power refers to their ability to influence student learning. Four assertions describe the factors influencing developing teachers who stay and have impact as they teach in challenging urban schools, suggesting that these teachers possess a strong work ethic, seek specific resources to improve pedagogy, have the knowledge and skills necessary to differentiate instruction, and seek teacher leadership opportunities in their schools. This study suggests several implications for teacher educators, educational leaders, administrators, and researchers working with new teachers in urban schools or with populations that are predominantly children of color.     

An Integrated Human Information Behavior Research Framework for Information Studies

Human information behavior is emerging as an important component of information studies. As in many emerging research areas, one challenge is to identify important facets of human information behavior and understand how different methods can be best used to research these facets. This paper presents the framework of an approach to designing and synthesizing research studies in human information behavior. The framework emerges from previous research in human information behavior and incorporates Ranganathan's framework for knowledge organization. It proposes that research studies that investigate human information behavior should consider the following facets: personality, matter, energy, space, and time. Personality refers to actors, and in this framework includes participants and their social networks. Matter refers to the target of the action. It includes information and information resources, including services and technology that may provide access to information. Energy is the action itself, including the participants' tasks, processes, and goals. Space is the environment of the action, and includes physical space as well as organizational and sociopolitical contexts. Time is the nonspatial continuum in which actions and events occur; in the framework, time is considered an episode, interval, or eon. Facets that should be investigated and taken into account in a study help guide the selection of the research methods for the study. Furthermore, research results from multiple studies can be synthesized by understanding the relationships among the facets investigated in the different studies.     

Teacher‐Pupil Relationships in Adult Literacy Tuition

This paper attempts to trace the dynamic processes involved in the establishment and maintenance of teacher‐pupil relationships and to explore some of the frameworks to be found at the level of face‐to‐face interaction. The article draws upon a qualitative study of one‐to‐one adult literacy tuition (Braund, 1981), which utilises the perspectives, experiences and definitions of grass‐roots participants to provide illumination and insight into an essentially ‘closed’ world. To these everyday interpretations, concepts from social phenomenology and symbolic interactionism are applied. The study reveals the stage by stage evolution of tutor‐student relationships during which individual interpretations and definitions of the situation are combined through negotiation to form a tailor‐made working concensus within each dyad. It goes on to show how the seeds of change contained within each relationship cause it to be in a state of constant evolution leading ultimately to its metamorphosis or termination. This emerging pattern, or relationship ‘career’, provides a framework to an apparently unstructured situation and it is the analysis of this process which forms the basis of the paper.     

A comparison of Dabrowski's overexcitabilities by gender for American and Korean high school gifted students

The differences between US (Ohio) gifted and talented high school students and South Korean gifted and talented high school students on the Overexcitabilities Questionnaire II (OEQ II) were investigated. The OEQ II was administered to 227 Ohio identified gifted and talented high school students (M = 88, F = 139) and to 341 high school students from four specialized high schools (one for science, one for foreign language, and two for the arts) in Seoul, Korea (M = 117; F = 224). Multiple analysis of variance by gender and country revealed that Korean males and females scored higher in psychomotor OE and that US males and females scored higher in imaginational OE. No differences were found in intellectual OE, emotional OE, or sensual OE.     

Individual differences in negative group work experiences in collaborative student learning

This paper reports the development of the Negative Group Work Experiences questionnaire (NGWE), an assessment tool for measuring negative experiences of group work. Study 1 involved two samples of undergraduate psychology students (second‐year sample n = 425; first‐year sample n = 443), who completed research modules incorporating substantial elements of assessed group work. Participants completed a 39‐item inventory designed to measure their negative experiences of group work as part of their general module evaluation. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the second‐year sample indicated four interpretable and reliable factors: lack of group commitment, group fractionation, task disorganisation, and storming. Confirmatory factor analysis of the first‐year data set confirmed and cross‐validated the factor structure of the second‐year sample. Study 2 (n > 254) confirmed the criterion validity of the NGWE. The NGWE is proposed as a useful tool for evaluating group processes, especially in large group teaching which involves collaborative group work.     

White middle‐class parents,identities, educational choice and the urban comprehensive school: dilemmas,ambivalence and moral ambiguity

At a time when the public sector and state education (in the United Kingdom) is under threat from the encroaching marketisation policy and private finance initiatives, our research reveals white middle‐class parents who in spite of having the financial opportunity to turn their backs on the state system are choosing to assert their commitment to the urban state‐run comprehensive school. Our analysis examines the processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’, and demonstrates the nature of the commitment the parents make to the local comprehensive school. However, it also shows the parents’ perceptions of the risk involved and their anxieties that these give rise to. The middle‐class parents are thus caught in a web of moral ambiguity, dilemmas and ambivalence, trying to perform ‘the good/ethical self’ while ensuring the ‘best’ for their children.     

Transferring technology to the small manufacturing firm: A study of technology transfer in three countries

Case histories were compiled of 100 instances of technological change in 102 manufacturing companies in eight industries in Ireland, Spain and Mexico. The cases are analyzed for the source of initial ideas and for sources of technology employed in resolving major problems.Technology is found to flow principally through informal channels within industries. Very little information was obtained from the formal mechanisms or institutions normally considered central to the technology transfer process.Foreign subsidiaries obtain the greatest proportion of their technology from their parent firms. Surprisingly, they are found to have several channels of technology blocked to them, which are more readily available to domestic firms. Domestic firms, in many ways have easier access to foreign technology than do the subsidiaries of multinational firms.Product and process innovations originate in somewhat different quarters. Process innovations are slightly more likely to be based on foreign technology; product innovations are more likely to be based on domestic technology.The results reported in the present paper are very similar in many ways to results reported previously in Brazil and Australia.     

Species-specific defense reactions in escape-from-fear situations

Five experiments are reported in which rats were given CS-shock pairings and then permitted, in the absence of shock, to perform a hurdle-jump response that led to CS offset. In Experiment 1–4, the animals failed to learn the required response. Although several procedural variations were employed, the experimental groups continued to perform no better than backward-conditioned controls. In Experiment 5, some animals were punished for remaining immobile during a single trial at the start of hurdle-jump training. These animals performed significantly better than nonpunished controls and better than any group in Experiments 1–4. The results support the idea that the major role of the CS in escape-from-fear situations is to activate an innate motivational system which chooses between the species-specific defense reactions of freezing and fleeing.