The National Board certification process as professional development: The potential for changed literacy practice

Using a communities-of-practice framework, this 2-year qualitative study centered on five elementary teachers the year following their participation in the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification process. Focused on teachers’ appropriation of the Board's standards and portfolio as conceptual tools related to literacy instruction, the study suggests that the National Board process does provide a learning opportunity for teachers and can positively impact teachers’ practice over time. However, personal and institutional constraints influence the degree to which teachers are able to implement instruction aligned with National Board standards.     

Recovery of the rabbit’s conditioned nictitating membrane response without direct reinforcement after extinction

Three experiments demonstrated that, following the extinction of an established conditioned stimulus (CSA—e.g., tone), the pairing of a novel, cross-modal stimulus (CSB—e.g., light) with the unconditioned stimulus (US) results in strong recovery of responding to the extinguished CSA. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the recovery of responding to CSA is not the result of US reinstatement but is attributable to pairings of CSB with the US. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the recovery of responding is specific to CSA and is not the result of cross-modal generalization. Experiment 3 revealed that a large number of CSB-US pairings in Stage 1 significantly reduced the amount of recovery to CSA during subsequent CSB-US trials. Experiment 3 also provided unexpected evidence of cross-modal secondary extinction. The extinction and subsequent recovery of responding seen in the present experiments is discussed with respect to possible contributions from contextual associations, CS processing, US processing, conditioned response expression, and layered excitatory associations.     

Facebook as a mechanism for informal teacher professional learning in Indonesia

This study investigated the use of Facebook as a medium for, and process of, teachers’ informal professional learning regarding mathematical and pedagogical knowledge. Facebook responses to four inter-related posts about mathematics examples from Facebook users (N = 117) were captured and systematically analysed using content analysis. The data were examined through the lens of the five characteristics of the Effective Professional Development framework. The results identified different types of responses to the four Facebook posts including the opening of learning opportunities, rich mathematical and pedagogical discussions, respondents’ appreciations and direct impacts of the posts, as well as the acknowledgement of the misalignment between the proposed ideas and current teaching practices in Indonesia. These responses provided evidence that all five characteristics of the framework were apparent and highlighted the role of Facebook in supporting teacher informal professional learning within the Indonesian context. The limitations of such social networking-based research and implications for teacher professional development are provided.     

Can business schools increase student employability by embedding action learning into undergraduate management education? An account of practice

ABSTRACT

Management education is at a pivotal crossroads. In an increasingly globalized world, where change is the only constant, business school graduates leaving university are faced with ever intensifying competition and complexity. Universities have responded by increasing their emphasis on teaching ‘employability skills’ to graduates. However, undergraduate management curricula still often focus on Programmed Knowledge, which does not adequately prepare graduates for the labour market to which they will inevitably graduate. A Future Search exercise was implemented to help conceptualize new visions of the future of management education, considering the question ‘to what extent does management education impact on management practice?’ This paper asserts that integrating Questioning Insight and a scholarly practice approach into management education will better equip graduates for the world of work. The authors utilize Kotter’s 8-stage model of change to outline a pathway for change and action for business schools to adapt a scholarly practice approach to education into their curricula.     

Single-sex schooling and subject choice: Pattern of enrolment at Monash University

Using data collected from incoming students at Monash University from 1972 to 1990, this study assesses the impact of single-sex versus coeducational schooling on the faculty choice of both female and male students. A clear pattern emerges of students from co-educational schools being over-represented in Science and Engineering and under-represented in Law and Medicine and, in recent years, in Economics and Politics. This is true for both females and males. However, further analysis establishes that this is more likely to be caused by socio-economic factors than by the gender composition of the school attended, since most students from co-educational schools come from the government sector and most students from single-sex schools from the independent sector.     

Action learning – an experience working with executives at the IBM corporation

The increasing emphasis on innovation in executive development has important implications for contemporary organizations talent professionals and strategy creators. Providing an experience that addresses individual and team development, strategic innovation, organizational alignment and the integration of values is the objective of the action learning programme at International Business Machines (IBM). This article identifies the frameworks and lessons learned in the action learning experiences of Integration and Values Team, the top 300 executives, at IBM.     

Anchoring effects on prospective and retrospective metacomprehension judgments as a function of peer performance information

Two experiments were conducted to investigate anchoring effects on metacomprehension judgments as a function of fictitious information participants received about past peer performance. In Experiment 1 participants were randomly assigned to one of the three anchor groups that, in some cases, provided past peer performance averages in terms of a percentage: a high anchor (85%) a low anchor (55%), and no anchor. Results showed that relative to the no anchor group, the low anchor group made significantly lower prospective judgments whereas the high anchor group did not make significantly higher prospective judgments. With a high anchor of greater magnitude (95%), Experiment 2 demonstrated more pronounced anchoring effects on prospective judgments: Relative to the no anchor group, the low anchor group made significantly lower judgments and the high anchor group made significantly higher judgments. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that anchoring effects occurred even on retrospective judgments. Overall, the results showed that peer performance information can serve as an anchoring point for metacomprehension judgments and the anchoring effects are tenacious given that they can even affect retrospective judgments of performance.     

Embodied encounters with more-than-human nature in health and physical education

ABSTRACT

Despite the importance of interactions with natural environments for personal and social well-being, there is only limited evidence of the relationship between the environment and health as an idea or area of study in school education in Australia. Logically, the place for such a study, at least in Australia, would be within the Health & Physical Education (HPE) key learning area. However, in HPE, alternative ways of considering health beyond the dominant ‘healthism’ discourses which privilege physical activity, fitness, food and nutrition struggle for any kind of existence. Gruenewald (2004. A Foucauldian analysis of environmental education: Toward the socioecological challenge of the earth charter. Curriculum Inquiry, 34(1), 71–107) suggests looking to the margins of a field to see what knowledge is silenced or subjugated in order to open up new conditions of possibility. This challenged us to look beyond taken for granted ways of thinking about health to identify other resources, perhaps unrecognised as yet, that teachers might draw on to constitute their knowledge of health. To do this, we look to interview data collected when teachers were asked to talk about their personal experiences of the relationship between the environment and health. The analysis of the interviews demonstrated how the teachers conceptualised the relationship between the environment and health by drawing on embodied experiences and affective encounters with more-than-human nature. By theorising these encounters through a post-human, new-materialist lens, we demonstrate how their corporeal knowledge, developed through embodied experiences, has the potential to assist teachers in formulating less institutionalised health understandings. We argue that these encounters with more-than-human nature can serve as alternatives to those dominant healthism discourses that invoke problematic risk, fear and crisis responses.     

Testing the effectiveness of the Developing Inclusive Youth program: A multisite randomized control trial

The Developing Inclusive Youth program is a classroom-based, individually administered video tool that depicts peer-based social and racial exclusion, combined with teacher-led discussions. A multisite randomized control trial was implemented with 983 participants (502 females; 58.5% White, 41.5% Ethnic/racial minority; M_age = 9.64 years) in 48 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms across six schools. Children in the program were more likely to view interracial and same-race peer exclusion as wrong, associate positive traits with peers of different racial, ethnic, and gender backgrounds, and report play with peers from diverse backgrounds than were children in the control group. Many approaches are necessary to achieve antiracism in schools. This intervention is one component of this goal for developmental science.     

Transformation impossible: policy,evidence and change in South African higher education

Higher Education - A quarter of a century after South Africa’s transition to democracy, the rhetoric of ‘transformation’ remains firmly ingrained in its higher education policy...