Can a systematic assessment moderation process assure the quality and integrity of assessment practice while supporting the professional development of casual academics?

There has been a threefold increase in the employment of casual academics in Australian universities within the last 20 years, to the extent that most teaching and marking is now undertaken by casual academics, also known as sessional staff. Yet, casualised teaching and assessment has been considered a risk to student engagement and success, and casual academics report a lack of professional development and increased feelings of marginalisation within the academy. Concurrently, the quality assurance of teaching and assessment in higher education has become a central focus of the government-funded regulatory organisation, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). Situated within this context, we report on an assessment moderation process that could support casual academics’ contextualised professional development, generate a sense of connectedness and collegiality and fulfil the requirements of TEQSA. Such processes may ensure that workforce growth in the higher education system supports a robust quality assurance and regulatory framework.     

A different type of charter school: in prestige charters,a rise in cachet equals a decline in access

This paper seeks to elucidate a specific type of charter school. While much has been written about school choice and the expanding charter school segment, a growing and important number of charter schools do not fit in to the common understanding of these schools. Distinct from many of their counterparts, prestige charter schools have the following two features: elements which foster a reputation similar to that of elite private schools and a student population demographically distinct from local public district schools – whereby the prestige charters serve a disproportionate number of advantaged families. The prestige elements include: founding by advantaged community members; parental involvement; wait lists; popularity with advantaged professionals; high test scores; and niche themes. The authors will show through two in-depth case studies that prestige charter schools work hand-in-hand with gentrification in urban neighborhoods, and result in racial and class segregation and inequality. This paper examines how these charter schools struggle when a rise in prestige coincides with a decline in access for low-income students. The authors recommend that given the current system of school choice, prestige charter schools must use tools and mechanisms to maintain demographic diversity and educational equity which is in the best interest of all children.     

A sociocultural perspective on mediated activity in third grade science

This ethnographic study of a third grade classroom examined elementary school science learning as a sociocultural accomplishment. The research focused on how a teacher helped his students acquire psychological tools for learning to think and engage in scientific practices as locally defined. Analyses of classroom discourse examined both how the teacher used mediational strategies to frame disciplinary knowledge in science as well as how students internalized and appropriated ways of knowing in science. The study documented and analyzed how students came to appropriate scientific knowledge as their own in an ongoing manner tied to their identities as student scientists. Implications for sociocultural theory in science education research are discussed. John Reveles is an assistant professor in the Elementary Education Department at California State University, Northridge. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. Before pursuing his Ph.D., he worked as a bilingual elementary school teacher for 3 years. His research focuses on the development of scientific literacy in elementary school settings; sociocultural influences on students' academic identity; equity of access issues in science education; qualitative and quantitative research methods. Within the Michael D. Eisner College of Education, he teaches elementary science curriculum methods courses, graduate science education seminars, and graduate research courses. Gregory Kelly is a professor of science education at Penn State University. He is a former Peace Corps Volunteer and physics teacher. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1994. His research focuses on classroom discourse, epistemology, and science learning. This work has been supported by grants from Spencer Foundation, National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Education. He teaches courses concerning the uses of history, philosophy, sociology of science in science teaching and teaching and learning science in secondary schools. He is editor of the journal Science Education. Richard Durán is a Professor in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara. His research and publications have been in the areas of literacy and assessment of English Language Learners and Latino students. He has also conducted research on after school computer clubs, technology and learning as part of the international UC Links Network. With support from the Kellogg Foundation, he is implementing and investigating community and family-centered intervention programs serving the educational progress of Latino students in the middle and high school grades.     

Thinking with certainty or with doubt: a Lacanian theorisation of discursive knowledge in teacher education

ABSTRACT

The paper presents a theorisation of pedagogic knowledge formation, as a continuous attempt to understand the positions in discourse we occupy. The paper documents some participatory practitioner research by teacher educators centred on a course development initiative for student teachers of English, at an English university. Students researched their experiences of becoming a teacher within a course that was largely school-based, whilst their tutors researched their own involvement in the process (the main focus of this paper). Drawing on Lacanian theory, tutors are depicted as learning subjects having more or less certainty or doubt about the knowledge they possess. In attempting to understand this interplay of certainty and doubt, tutors arrive at stronger conceptualisations of learning. Through this approach, the paper provides a theoretically informed conception of professional knowledge, as involving a process of renewing ideas about learning, in meeting or resisting external demands.     

Tongan students’ attitudes towards their subjects in new zealand relative to their academic achievement

Research indicates that affective attitudes such as liking of a subject and confidence in one’s ability within a subject predict academic performance. Generally, immigrant minority students have positive attitudes and often have low academic performance. This study examines the self-efficacy and liking of subjects of New Zealand students and analyses the relationship of those attitudes towards academic performance in mathematics, writing, and reading by self-reported ethnicity. Data were obtained from the norming samples from the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning project in New Zealand. Of special interest are the relationships between attitude and performance for Pasifika and Tongan students in New Zealand. Tongan and Pasifika students had positive attitudes, but their mean scores were not significantly different to other ethnic groups except in writing for Tongan students. Tongan and Pasifika students did have lower academic performance than majority and Asian immigrant students in all three subjects. The correlation between liking and self-efficacy was fundamentally zero for Tongan and Pasifika students, while it was weakly positive for majority and Asian immigrant students. Together these results question the power of self-efficacy and liking attitudes to predict academic performance for immigrant students from agrarian or traditional societies. Further, the data suggest that ‘school effects’ are most likely explanations for this relationship, rather than lack of attachment, opposition, or deficiency theories.     

Parent Surveys for Teacher Evaluation

Parent or guardian perceptions play a specialized role in the evaluation of school teachers. Parents are important stakeholders in teacher success, they are in some instances partners in the teachers' work, parents have unique personal information about student learning, and they can report on the teacher duties to inform parents about the classroom and child progress. This study analyzed the responses of parents to 12 survey items concerning teacher performance in 201 classrooms. The surveys were used as part of an innovative teacher evaluation program in which teachers elected to include parent feedback as one objective data source for annual review. In this study three factors emerged as important concerns for parents: humane treatment of students, support for pupil learning, and effective communication and collaboration with parents. Recommendations for use of specific survey items can be based on the empirical results of this sampling. The data gathered by parent surveys define one dimension of quality which may vary in importance from one teacher to another.