Curriculum‐Based Measurement of Oral Reading fluency (CBM‐R): An objective orientated evaluation study

The knowledge and practices associated with improved outcomes for readers have yielded converging evidence about practices associated with improved reading outcomes for primary students. This considerable intervention knowledge can be beneficial for English teachers working with struggling secondary readers. Fluency is one critical element that becomes increasingly important for many older students with reading difficulties as they strive to read large quantities of text written at challenging levels, with sufficient speed, accuracy and understanding to keep up with class content and demands. This objective‐orientated evaluation study examined the effects of Curriculum‐Based Measurement of Oral Reading (CBM‐R), a prevention‐orientated approach designed to identify readers at risk of not achieving adequate outcomes, on 94 second‐grade students from a primary school in New South Wales, Australia. Results indicate that teachers found CBM‐R to be a reliable and easily implemented prevention‐orientated system, which has the capacity to raise awareness of fluency abilities to guide differentiated practice and reduce the risk of failure in English.     

Action Research,Assessment, and Institutional Review Boards (IRB): Conflicting Demands or Productive Tension for the Academic Librarian?

This article puts forward an “assessment/action research/publication” cycle that integrates aspects of the assessment, research, and Institutional Review Board (IRB) processes to provide academic librarians with a systematic approach for balancing competing workplace demands and give library managers a roadmap for creating a “research culture” (Jacobs, Berg, and Cornwall) within their libraries. The article argues that librarians and library managers have much to gain by integrating action research into librarians’ everyday work loads, including increased ease in meeting publication demands for tenure and/or promotion, institutionalizing habits of reflective practice across all library service areas, and overall library improvement.     

One size does not fit all: Understanding the variation in charter management scale-up

The prevalence of charter management organizations (CMOs)—networks of charter schools overseen by a home office—has exploded in recent years but there is a paucity of research into how CMOs approach growth and the factors that influence their growth plans. In this qualitative study, we examine how a set of 25 older, more established CMOs approached growth. Findings suggest that strategies for scale-up varied depending on the external policy environment and the internal organizational capacity of the CMO. In addition, CMOs approached growth from one of three styles: premeditated, opportunistic, or organic. Finally, longitudinal data reveal that CMOs often struggled to meet their growth targets; fewer than half of the sample CMOs met or were on track to meet their projected scale-up targets. From these findings emerged a key source of tension: On one hand, CMOs are facing pressure from policymakers and foundations to grow and expand rapidly. On the other hand, scaling-up too quickly or in ways that fall outside of the CMO’s mission can lead to serious consequences for the organization, its schools, and students. Our research aims to contribute to this debate by demonstrating that “one size does not fit all” for CMO scale-up, a lesson important for policymakers, educators, and researchers alike.     

Remaking the professional teacher: authority and curriculum reform

Globally, national curriculum policies are up for renegotiation. These negotiations are shaped by international and national top-down accountability regimes, and an increasing turn towards curriculum centralization and standardization. The new Australian Curriculum (AC) is no exception. The AC is an important educational policy event, one in which understandings about teacher professional authority is being redefined. In this paper, we examine how judgements about teachers’ professional authority are used to defend, promote and explain the AC. Drawing on an analysis of policy documents and interviews with high-level policy-makers, we argue that the AC is opening space in the policy field to reposition teachers’ work by promoting a view of teachers’ professional authority as constrained and defined through the written curriculum documentation.     

How does homework ‘work’ for young children? Children’s accounts of homework in their everyday lives

Homework is an increasing yet under-researched part of young children’s everyday lives. Framed by the international agendas of starting strong and school accountability, homework in the lives of young children has been either overlooked or considered from the perspective of adults rather than from the perspective of children themselves. This paper redresses this situation by reporting on an Australian study of 120 young children, aged four to eight years, where homework emerges as a key part of their everyday lives. Children’s own accounts of their everyday decision-making, using audio-taped conversations and concurrent paper-based timeline activities, show homework as accomplishing the institutional purposes of the school, while affording the children opportunities to demonstrate their competence in operating in an adult-generated education regime.     

‘We're the mature people': a study of masculine subjectivity and its relationship to key stage four Religious Studies

Critical theory and research has shown that subjects carry gendered meanings. Numbers opting for Religious Studies (RS) have remained skewed towards girls. Drawing from post-structuralism and masculinities theory, this article critically analyses data from interviews with a group of key stage four boys who had opted for Religious Studies in contrast to the majority of their male peers. Interview data demonstrate that these boys were able to use Religious Studies as a discursive resource, constituting themselves as emergent critical ethical subjects and developing their own relationship to existential questions of meaning and purpose. The boys demonstrated reflexive self awareness as they were also able to negotiate socially successful identities through their relationship to the dominant masculinising forces of sport, physicality and authority and engage with Religious Studies. This article concludes that subjects such as Religious Studies which create spaces for criticality also act to create masculine subjectivities outside of restrictive gendered norms.     

Difficult Conversations

Organizations by their very nature will incur conflict and individuals will need to negotiate differences, behaviors, and performance. Effective leaders understand that difficult conversations are necessary in managing an organization or unit. No one wants to initiate a difficult conversation or to address performance issues but it is essential that leaders face the need to have hard conversations and in so doing, the organization will benefit from an ongoing dialogue. This column will discuss the need for difficult conversations and some tips for facilitating a dialogue. Interested authors are invited to submit articles for this column to the editor at farrell@uwyo.edu.