Unsung Heroes: Exploring the roles of school-based professional experience coordinators in Australian preservice teacher education

The literature on practicum in preservice teacher education provides varied and detailed accounts of the roles of the student teacher, the supervising teacher, and the university-based teacher educator. However, the school-based professional experience coordinator, usually the principal or deputy principal, has been dismissed as an administrative outsider to the essential triad of supervision. Feedback from the field suggested that the coordinator's role may in fact be crucial in ensuring that practicum is an occasion for quality learning. This paper reports on a study to explore ways in which a small selection of professional experience coordinators contribute to the establishment, support and appraisal of high quality practicum experience in a variety of settings. The research fills a gap in the existing literature on the practicum by providing some illumination of the varied ways the school-based coordinator role is filled. In addition, the paper raises questions about selection and support of coordinators, about ownership of the practicum, and argues for a reconceptualisation of the practicum as the site where all shareholders engage in the partnership, with continual opportunities for construction, reconstruction and renewal of the teaching profession.     

Twenty-four things to do with a book

During a summer workshop course, a group of teachers in British Columbia recently considered ways of encouraging the response of readers in their classes. Time was limited, and their ideas reflect a sustained brainstorming session rather than an attempt to produce a definitive list. More-idiosyncratic ideas which depended upon the peculiar skills of individual teachers have been omitted, as have highly specific illustrations relating to particular books. A dance drama version ofWatership Down, for example, was not seen as a readily transferable classroom activity.The suggestions below are for individual work, for work in pairs, groups, or with the whole class. The Canadian teachers were concerned to confirm a climate in which books were readily handled, shared and exchanged as a central and regular practice of the class.Geoff Fox has taught in secondary schools in both England and America. He has been Visiting Professor at Harvard University and the University of British Columbia and is on the staff at Exeter University. He has collaborated on several books, both for the classroom and for teachers, and is Secretary to the U K Editorial Committee ofCle.     

Negotiating the "Rackety Bridge" — a Dynamic Model for Aligning Supervisory Style with Research Student Development

Postgraduate research student supervision is examined with the aim of developing a model of the supervisory relationship to improve practice by encouraging a more proactive role for students. The term "competent autonomy" is defined and argued to be a universal objective of the PhD. A tentative "supervisor/student alignment model" based on the development of this objective is proposed. It draws upon some features of earlier models but stresses the need for a dynamic alignment of supervisory style with the student's degree of development. Operationalised as a tool and tested empirically, it was found to encourage students to periodically reflect on and discuss their needs as competent autonomy is developed. Feedback is presented from a group of PhD students with whom the tool has been used at approximately 6 monthly intervals for up to three years to deliver supervision aligned to their dynamic needs.     

Getting it Right: selection and setting in a 9‐13 years middle school

Educational selection has been a central issue for Structural Functionalist, Marxist and Interpretative sociologists of education. While knowledge about selection processes within schools has increased over the past two decades, as a result of ethnographic studies of schooling, the social process of collective teacher decision making, when teachers are engaged in institutional channelling, has been largely neglected. This paper explores collective teacher decision making at a point of allocation through the medium of a case study of setting in one 9‐13 years middle school. The paper argues that the discussion concerning the recent initiatives of educational selection embodied in modularisation, pupil assessment, common examinations and national testing should be informed by research of teacher interaction at points of allocation.     

Relative efficiency among South African universities: A data envelopment analysis

Based on a sample of ten of the country's 21public universities, this article examines therelative efficiency of South Africanuniversities between 1994 and 1997 using DataEnvelopment Analysis. After outlining thenature and limitations of the technique, aseries of seven models were tested. Each used aconsolidation of the annual output of graduatesand research as the output variable and testedthis against various input variables. A highdegree of consistency and stability was found.Differences in efficiency during the four yearperiod were studied and the article concludeswith a discussion of four factors which appearcentral in explaining differences in efficiencybetween universities.     

Pedagogical Bricoleurs and Bricolage Researchers: The case of Religious Education

This article reconceptualises school teachers and pupils respectively as ‘pedagogical bricoleurs’ and ‘bricolage researchers’ who utilise a multiplicity of theories, concepts, methodologies and pedagogies in teaching and/or researching. This reconceptualisation is based on a coalescence of generic curricular and pedagogical principles promoting dialogic, critical and enquiry-based learning. Innovative proposals for reconceptualising the aims, contents and methods of multi-faith Religious Education in English state-maintained schools without a religious affiliation are described, so as to provide an instance of and occasion for the implications of these theories and concepts of learning. With the aim of initiating pupils into the communities of academic enquiry concerned with theology and religious studies, the ‘RE-searchers approach’ to multi-faith Religious Education in primary schools (5–11 year olds) is cited as a highly innovative means of converting these curricular and pedagogical principles and proposals into practical classroom procedures. These procedures are characterised by multi-, inter- and supra-disciplinarity; notions of eclecticism, emergence, flexibility and plurality; and theoretical and conceptual complexity, contestation and context-dependence.     

The Development of Reasoning about Causal and Noncausal Influences on Levers

2 studies examined 5–12-year-olds' judgments regarding the behavior of balance scales and other levers whose arms varied in a causal (the number of equally weighted objects or their distances from the fulcrum) or a noncausal (the color, position, or orientation of objects) variable. There were age-related increases in correct judgments for each causal and noncausal variable, with children tending to make correct judgments about the influence of physical features of objects (their number and color) at an earlier age than they did about spatial relations between objects (their distance, orientation, and position). Children's patterns of errors judging the influence of causal (particularly distance) and noncausal (particularly position and orientation) variables were different, and there was no relation between children's correct judgments regarding causal and noncausal variables The results suggest that there are separate processes underlying children's ability to identify causal and dismiss noncausal influences on levers which are dependent on the kinds of features (physical or both physical and spatial) which children conceive of as potentially influencing the behavior of levers.     

The Rise of the New Professionals? The restructuring of primary teachers’ work and professionalism

This article explores teachers’ reactions to changing management cultures and argues for a complex reading of their responses. Data from an ethnographic study of a primary school are used to illustrate the restructuring of the teachers’ work since the mid‐1980s. Different teacher strategies were developed in response to changes in the managerial control of their work and dominant management constructions of professionalism. Whereas teachers in an occupational culture, the ‘old professionals’, largely resisted the changes but subsequently left the school or left teaching, the ‘new professionals’ complied with some of management's changed expectations of them, but resisted others. In the new managerialist culture the teachers experienced new forms of control and their roles increasingly included managerial tasks. The article concludes by suggesting that measures for policing teachers’ work, such as inspection and school self‐management may limit the spaces in which teachers can use strategies of resistance within accommodation.     

Improving the presentation of printed text for tertiary level distance education: Literature review and survey

This paper furnishes recommendations for improving the presentation of distance education study guides. Two approaches were used to distil these recommendations. First, a review of the literature was undertaken. Then, the opinions of thirty‐five practitioners with first‐hand experience of printed study guide production for distance education were surveyed. The questionnaire (which was constructed on the basis of the literature findings) covered many aspects of textual design and layout including general, as well as macro and micro textual issues. Both sources generally agreed that simplicity, consistency, adequate use of white space, utilisation of a hierarchical heading structure, and use of access devices are essential for optimal textual design. But the applicability of a universal layout style, methods of separating paragraphs, whether to use section numbering, replacing textual cues with icons, the readability of fully justified text, and techniques for differentiating levels of headings were more contentious issues.     

Making sense of and with mathematics: the interface between academic mathematics and mathematics in practice

This article summarises what we can learn from research into workplace practice and vocational preparation to inform the design of mathematics education curricula for learners in general education undertaking compulsory schooling. Key findings about workplace practices are identified and explicated through the report of a case study from research in which researchers, students, teachers and workers explored workplace and mathematical practices together. Further to this, issues of learning and personal development are considered and explored from a point of view that sees learning as practice (doing) and identity development (becoming). This leads to a proposal for principles that provide a strategic vision for curriculum design. A potential approach to tactical design that facilitates curriculum structuring is illustrated in the particular instance of understanding developing measures as a modelling activity. Overall, the exercise, whilst providing some insight into possible ways forward in curriculum development, also suggests areas that require further research and development.