Support teachers' beliefs about the academic achievement of students with special educational needs

José Castro Silva, lecturer in sciences of education, and José Morgado, assistant professor, both work at the Instituto Superior de Psicologica Aplicada in Lisboa, Portugal. In this article, they describe their study of support teachers' beliefs about the academic achievement of school students with special educational needs. The 'support teachers' who were the subject of this study work in mainstream schools where the majority of pupils with special educational needs are educated in mainstream classes run by 'general teachers'. The work of the support teachers is supervised and supported by 'special education team co-ordinators'. The study reported here set out to elicit the support teachers' beliefs about the factors that contribute to success at school for pupils with special educational needs. Results suggest that the support teachers consider that factors including 'school climate', 'curriculum design' and 'teaching approach' contribute significantly to achievements among these pupils. On the other hand, analysis reveals that the support teachers attribute difficulties and lack of achievement significantly to 'out-of-school' contextual variables. These findings are related to a detailed review of the literature and the authors discuss the implications for policy, practice and professional development.     

Enhancing students’ mathematical reasoning in the classroom: teacher actions facilitating generalization and justification

A proof is a connected sequence of assertions that includes a set of accepted statements, forms of reasoning and modes of representing arguments. Assuming reasoning to be central to proving and aiming to develop knowledge about how teacher actions may promote students’ mathematical reasoning, we conduct design research where whole-class mathematical discussions triggered by exploratory tasks play a key role. We take mathematical reasoning as making justified inferences and we consider generalizing and justifying central reasoning processes. Regarding teacher actions, we consider inviting, informing/suggesting, supporting/guiding and challenging actions can be identified in whole-class discussions. This paper presents design principles for an intervention geared to tackle such reasoning processes and focuses on a whole-class discussion on a grade 7 lesson about linear equations and functions. Data analysis concerns teacher actions in relation to design principles and to the sought mathematical reasoning processes. The conclusions highlight teacher actions that lead students to generalize and justify. Generalizations may arise from a central challenging action or from several guiding actions. Regarding justifications, a main challenging action seems to be essential, while follow-up guiding actions may promote a further development of this reasoning process. Thus, this paper provides a set of design principles and a characterization of teacher actions which enhance students’ mathematical reasoning processes such as generalization and justification.     

Coping strategies for adaptation to new teacher appointments: Intervention for retention

Findings are presented from a qualitative longitudinal collective case study of 29 teachers newly appointed to rural or remote schools in Western Australia. All participants experienced stress and articulated coping strategies in response: direct-action, palliative and avoidant strategies. Where protective structures and processes existed in environments, teachers employed direct-action problem-solving strategies. Avoidant strategies were more common in young and mature-aged novices, rather than experienced teachers.Three critical times were identified to support adaptation: first weeks of appointment for information, first semester for assistance, support, feedback for development of competence and three months before the year-end for stability and certainty.     

Socio-cultural variation in reading comprehension development among fifth graders in Peru

In this study, the socio-cultural variation in reading comprehension development was examined in 331 fifth graders from schools in Lima, Peru. Reading comprehension was measured using an adaptation of the PIRLS Reading Literacy test. The fifth graders?? reading comprehension results, measured over the course of fifth grade, were related to the development of word decoding, vocabulary, and motivation for reading. Children??s development in these domains was related to their gender, intellectual maturity, home literacy climate, and socio-economic status. Structural Equation Modelling showed that the development of reading comprehension was influenced by the children??s ability to decode words, their vocabulary, and reading motivation. Furthermore, gender and intellectual maturity as well as children??s home literacy climate and socio-economic status appeared to substantially predict reading comprehension development, directly or indirectly. More than half of the variance in reading comprehension by the end of the fifth grade could be explained based on these predictor variables.     

Why Implementing History and Philosophy in School Science Education is a Challenge: An Analysis of Obstacles

Teaching and learning with history and philosophy of science (HPS) has been, and continues to be, supported by science educators. While science education standards documents in many countries also stress the importance of teaching and learning with HPS, the approach still suffers from ineffective implementation in school science teaching. In order to better understand this problem, an analysis of the obstacles of implementing HPS into classrooms was undertaken. The obstacles taken into account were structured in four groups: 1. culture of teaching physics, 2. teachers?? skills, epistemological and didactical attitudes and beliefs, 3. institutional framework of science teaching, and 4. textbooks as fundamental didactical support. Implications for more effective implementation of HPS are presented, taking the social nature of educational systems into account.     

Pragmatic language in deaf and hard of hearing students: correlation with success in general education

Deaf and hard of hearing children have shown delays and difficulties in pragmatic behaviors due to insufficient exposure to common daily discourse and underlying impoverishment in all components of language development. In a study in a school district in a southeastern U.S. state, the researchers investigated the relationship between sociolinguistic pragmatic competence in 81 deaf and hard of hearing students and these students' degree of hearing loss, communication mode, and degree of success in general education. Two measures, one devised by the state's department of education and one developed within the local school system, were used: the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (Georgia Department of Education, 2000) and the Socio-Pragmatic Skills Checklist for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students (Cobb County School District, 1997). The researchers found that whether the students used spoken language or signed language, socio-pragmatic language had a high, positive correlation with academic outcomes.     

Distancing to self‐protect: the perpetuation of inequality in higher education through socio‐relational dis/engagement

This paper explores the social class‐differentiated behaviours of access and traditional‐entry students, based on a three‐year constructivist grounded theory study with 45 undergraduates at an Irish university. The participant groups behaved significantly differently within the socio‐relational realm, engaging in various forms of distancing behaviours motivated by a desire to self‐protect and based on perceived relative social positioning. The paper illustrates some ways in which both disadvantage and privilege are performed at the post‐entry stage in a widening participation context. It is argued that the ‘closure’ behaviours of class‐based groups constrain the building of social capital by working‐class students, thus potentially limiting the ability of widening participation policies in achieving equality goals.     

School quality, child wellbeing and parents’ satisfaction

Child wellbeing at school and enjoyment of the learning environment are important economic outcomes, in particular because a growing body of research shows they are strongly linked to later educational attainments and labour market success. However, the standard working assumption in the economics of education is that parents choose schools on the basis of test-score performance, and concerns about child happiness are largely ignored. In this paper, we address this omission and investigate to what extent parents’ and children's views of their school are linked to test-score based performance, and to what extent parents’ judgements of school quality are linked to their child's happiness. To do so, we use information on stated attitudes from the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England (LSYPE) matched to administrative records on pupil achievements in England. Our results suggest that test-score based measures of school quality tend to dominate parental satisfaction with the learning environment. However, school quality along this dimension is not strongly associated with pupil happiness and wellbeing at school.     

Professional Development for School Library Media Professionals: Elements for Success

The American Association for School Librarians suggests an important mission for school librarians is to ensure personal growth through ongoing exposure to conferences, journal articles, webinars, presentations, and membership in professional organizations. As professional educators, School Librarians should exemplify the vision for being life-long learners. Methods and means to grow in the profession should be evaluated and examined for elements that lead to success in growth and maturity as professionals in school library media. This article investigates the attributes of successful professional development experiences which include learning environment, characteristics of learners, methodologies, and instructional design of staff development workshops.