VAM Under Scrutiny: Teacher Evaluation Litigation in the States

As teacher quality is judged and tenured teachers are rated ineffective, educators are challenging teacher evaluation systems in the courts as they adversely affect their employment. Teachers have lost jobs, pay, tenure, and career advancement. This article reports on these cases, providing an interpretation in light of court cases about teacher evaluation with an emphasis on value-added models (VAM), and focuses on the litigation working its way through the courts.     

Educative mentors? The role of classroom teachers in initial teacher education. A New Zealand study

Classroom experience is an important part of initial teacher education (ITE) and the teachers who work with student teachers in schools have a significant impact on learning in this context. While many studies have documented what the role of these teachers should be, it is also important to consider how the role is conceptualised by the teachers themselves. This qualitative study compares the views of New Zealand primary school teachers with that of an ITE provider. The findings show some differences among the teachers and significant differences between classroom teachers’ interpretations of their role and the expectations of the ITE provider. Teacher interpretations are firmly held and there is more work to be done to explore understandings of educative mentoring and so develop a coherent shared vision of roles in the practicum community.     

Promoting writing amongst peers: establishing a community of writing practice for early career academics

In the current research-focused climate, academics are facing increasing pressure to produce research outputs. This pressure can prove particularly daunting for early career (EC) academics, who are simultaneously attempting to master new teaching and administrative demands while establishing their own independent research trajectories. Previous reports suggest that academic writing retreats can be an effective way of increasing research outputs. Such retreats generally involve academics from a range of career stages and require expert facilitators. Through organising a series of structured writing events, this project aims to cultivate an enduring community of practice for academic writers. Reflecting on our EC retreat and subsequent writing days with academics from different career stages, we suggest that success hinged on three key factors: (1) A formal structure comprising bounded periods of intense writing, flanked by group reviewing and goal-setting; (2) Co-located writing with participants based in a shared space, away from their usual workstation and distractions; (3) Peer discussions involving participants at a similar career stage. Specifically we found that writing amongst ‘equals’ increased productivity and confidence amongst EC academics.     

Beyond Plumbing and Prevention: feminist approaches to sex education

This article offers a feminist critique of existing sex education policies and programmes in Canada, as well as examining common right‐wing arguments against more progressive approaches. Two major forces shaping adolescent girls’ developing sexuality—male sexual violence and compulsory heterosexuality—are discussed, and recent initiatives in Ontario to introduce these issues into sex education programmes evaluated. Toronto Board of Education's new policy on sexual orientation and the Ontario Ministry of Education AIDS Education Curriculum are assessed and strategies for anti‐sexist, anti‐heterosexist sex education developed.     

Authenticating Sexual Diversity in School: Examining Sociolinguistic Constructions of Young People’s Sexual Identities

Recent research into sexuality and education shows that homophobia is particularly prevalent and problematic in schools. However, little of this work has drawn on linguistic frameworks. This article uses the tactics of intersubjectivity framework to examine how a group of LGB-identified young people understand their sexuality identities in relation to the secondary school context. The application of this framework offers deeper insights into sexual orientation and education than can be gained from thematic analysis alone and can contribute towards developing understandings of sexual diversity issues in schools. The framework is applied to interview data in which young LGB people talk about their school experiences. Findings show that in the schools attended by the young LGB people, they have experienced a state of pervasive illegitimation surrounding LGB identities. The participants express a desire for this perceived institutional illegitimation to be replaced by authorisation using a range of authentication strategies.     

Researcher intersubjectivity: a methodology for jointly building an interactive electronic early childhood quality involvement/rating scale

Researching quality in early childhood settings has been operationalized in many ways, within and across countries. Nevertheless, despite some consensus on what might constitute a universally recognized view of what is considered essential for young children’s development, there are strong indicators that locally developed assessment tools are likely to give more contextually relevant results. Yet, little appears to be known about how to develop localized tools for assessing quality, especially in culturally diverse research contexts. Further, it would seem that not much is understood about the ways researchers and research participants have worked together to achieve reciprocal outcomes. In drawing upon cultural-historical theory, this paper goes beyond the traditional binary of an emic–etic perspective and instead describes a dialectical model for creating conditions for generating research intersubjectivity. An example of how researchers and participants worked together to develop an interactive e-quality rating scale in Vietnam is presented with the research exchange methods of Dialogue through the technology, Capturing moments of localized quality, Community walk, and Research selfies. These methods together acted to underpin the methodology that foregrounds what we have termed research intersubjectivity.     

Sociocultural frameworks of conceptual change: implications for teaching and learning in museums

This article presents a metalogue discussion about the two focus articles and the six associated review essays on the topic of conceptual change as it applies to research, and science teaching and learning in museum settings. Through the lenses of a sociocultural perspectives of learning we examine the applicability of the ideas presented in the forum for museums and museum educators. First we reflect on the role that emotions can play in concept development; second, we reflect on the role of language, talk, and gestures to concept development and conceptual change in the short-lived nature of experiences and conversations in museums; and third, we consider the nature of objects as representations of science content in museum settings.

Group psychotherapy for adult women mistreated as children by pathological mothers

In this paper, group psychotherapy for adult women having similar backgrounds of abusive, pathological mothers is described. The goals of the group included: providing a support system to help the members cope with their destructive mothers, helping them to recognize how the conflictual relationship with their mothers generalized to other conflictual relationships particularly with abusive men, and helping the members to increase their behavioral repertoire for coping with their mothers' illogical and unreasonable demands. Unlike most treatment groups which take considerable time to develop trusting relationships, intimacy and cohesiveness among group members, the women in this group developed almost instant solidarity. This appeared due to their having a common bond based on sharing equally traumatic backgrounds and on their attraction to men as abusive to them as their mothers. Prior to the group, they felt that no one (including the individual therapist) could understand what their lives had been like. The solidarity in this group grew more intense with time which permitted deeper investigation of topics such as fear of unworthiness, closeness, and abandonment. Findings from a self-report questionnaire suggested that three of the five group members had achieved significant improvements in coping with their troublesome relationships with pathological mothers and abusive men. These three members attributed their gains to their new coping behaviors learned in group, the group's supportive environment, and the group's permission to examine fully the range of feelings they harbored toward their mothers and themselves.