Catalytic tools: understanding the interaction of enquiry and feedback in teachers’ learning

This paper investigates how the use of Pupil Views Templates (PVTs), a tool designed to elicit, record and analyse the development of students’ awareness of their own learning processes, supports teachers’ professional learning. This paper reports on a three‐year collaborative practitioner enquiry project involving more than 30 primary and secondary schools in England. The data set includes practitioners’ case studies, interviews, questionnaires and cross‐project analysis completed by the university team. Analysis focuses on the role of feedback, stimulated through the use of PVTs, in teachers’ learning through three dimensions: the influence of student feedback on teachers as part of the pedagogical encounter; the influence of student feedback on schools within the context of the practitioner enquiry projects; the influence of feedback on the lead teacher researchers. Links between the tools used, the source of the feedback, and teachers’ learning are mapped from a ‘second order perspective’ derived from the diverse data sources.     

The Role of Stories in the Formation of a University/Public School Collaborative Identity

This paper describes how two women, a university professor and a public school teacher, discovered how they had used the power of stories to develop the trust and understandings which were precursors to their engagement in collaborative teacher research. Stories became an intervention that promoted dialogue and helped to establish a collaborative identity. Collaboration between universities and public schools allows educators to engage jointly in research and rethinking of practice. The paper discusses the difficulties they experienced trying to break down barriers while bringing both voices to their writing and research. It also raises numerous questions about university/public school partnerships and the time, energy, and commitment needed to recognize the potential of this type of inquiry to the ‘world’ of teacher research.     

Moving through the Faculty Ranks: An Exploratory Study on the Perceived Importance of Book Publishing and Publishing in Peer‐Reviewed Journals in Criminology/Criminal Justice

This research explored the perceptions of members (N = 454) from two national criminology/criminal justice organizations regarding the significance of book publications and publishing peer‐reviewed journal articles for tenure and promotion. The research revealed the sentiment that journal article publications were perceived to be important publications when it came to promotion to both the associate and full professor ranks. More specifically, white faculty, those employed at research institutions, held a doctorate, and had considerable journal article publications, felt peer‐reviewed articles were important for tenure and promotion. The authors close by arguing that tenure and promotion committees should be open to book publications.     

Bridging two worlds: special education and curriculum policy

From interviews with seven blind New Zealand adults about their school experiences, this paper discusses how blindness has been constructed by some New Zealand mainstream principals and teachers. The experiences of these participants were not that of inclusion, despite being in ‘the mainstream’. The participants described how principals and teachers were both welcoming and unwelcoming. Inclusive principals and teachers were described as friendly, challenging, helpful and positive. They believed their blind students were like their other students. Principals and teachers who were remembered as excluding blind students were described as unfair, inflexible, unprepared and absent. They believed their blind students were different and did not find a social place for them.     

Understanding teaching assistant self-efficacy in role and in training: its susceptibility to influence

There has been a noted growth in the number of teaching assistants (TAs) in mainstream schools. Research is inconclusive about their efficacy at changing outcomes for children and has proposed more training for TAs. Generic training models have suggested that enhancing self-efficacy in turn improves performance. This exploratory study investigated factors that may influence TAs’ sense of self-efficacy and its susceptibility to influence in training. Following two modes of school-based training by educational psychologists (EPs) data were collected from 14 mainstream secondary school TAs using focus groups. A thematic analysis noted themes regarding self-efficacy, aligned with Bandura’s sources of information, outcome expectations and whole school support and norms. Review of the data from this study is likely to be able to guide potential trainers to coach-consult strategies which are self-efficacy supportive and which address contextual factors including the perceived status of TAs in schools.     

In strictest confidence

ZEN IN THE ART OF RHETORIC: AN INQUIRY INTO COHERENCE. By Mark Lawrence McPhail. New York: State University of New York Press. 1996; pp. v + 220. $19.95

AFTER POSTMODERNISM: RECONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY CRITIQUE. Ed. By Herbert W. Simons and Michael Billig. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Pub. 1994; pp. x + 258. $69.95; paper $19.95

PRIME‐TIME FEMINISM: TELEVISION, MEDIA CULTURE, AND THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT SINCE 1970. By Bonnie J. Dow. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996; pp. xxvi + 224. $39.95; paper $17.50.

THE CULTURAL PRISON: DISCOURSE, PRISONERS, AND PUNISHMENT. By John M. Sloop. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996; pp. viii + 244. $39.95.

BECOMING CITIZENS IN THE AGE OF TELEVISION: HOW AMERICANS CHALLENGED THE MEDIA AND SEIZED INITIATIVE DURING THE IRAN‐CONTRA DEBATE. By David P. Thelen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. pp. x + 244. $55.00; paper $14.95.

RAPE ON TRIAL: HOW THE MASS MEDIA CONSTRUCT LEGAL REFORM AND SOCIAL CHANGE. By Lisa M. Cuklanz. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996; pp. vii + 135. $28.95; paper $12.95.

LAW'S STORIES: NARRATIVE AND RHETORIC IN THE LAW. Edited by Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996; pp. vii + 290. $26.00.

POST‐REALISM: THE RHETORICAL TURN IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. Edited by Francis A. Beer and Robert Hariman. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996; pp. vii + 429. $35.95; paper $24.95.

DEFINING SCIENCE: A RHETORIC OF DEMARCATION. By Charles Alan Taylor. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996; pp vii + 292. $53.00; paper $22.95.

IM/PARTIAL SCIENCE: GENDER IDEOLOGY IN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY. By Bonnie B. Spanier. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1995; pp. xi + 207. $29.95; paper $14.95.

KENNETH BURKE: RHETORIC, SUBJECTIVITY, POSTMODERNISM. By Robert Wess. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996; pp. xxi + 262. $54.95; paper $18.95.

THE GIFT OF DEATH. By Jacques Derrida. Trans. David Wills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995; $18.95.

AUGUSTINE AND THE LIMITS OF POLITICS. By Jean Bethke Elshtain. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995; pp. xiv + 143. $21.95.

RHETORIC, SOPHISTRY, PRAGMATISM. Edited by Steven Mailloux. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995; pp.xii + 251. $54.95; paper $16.95.

THE RHETORIC OF REASON: WRITING AND THE ATTRACTIONS OF ARGUMENT. By James Crosswhite. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. pp. xii + 329. $58.00; paper $24.95

ESSAYS ON ARISTOTLE'S RHETORIC. Edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. Philosophical Traditions 6. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996; pp. xxiii + 441. $50.00; paper $19.95.

RHETORIC AS PEDAGOGY: ITS HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, AND PRACTICE; ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JAMES J. MURPHY. Edited by Winifred Bryan Homer and Michael Leff. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 1995; pp. xvi + 337. $69.95; paper $34.50.

VOICING AMERICA: LANGUAGE, LITERARY FORM, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE UNITED STATES. By Christopher Looby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996; pp. xi + 287. $29.95.

THE LANGUAGE OF DEMOCRACY: POLITICAL RHETORIC IN THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN, 1790–1900. By Andrew W. Robertson. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995; pp. xv + 264. $35.00.

THE CONUNDRUM OF CLASS: PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON THE SOCIAL ORDER IN AMERICA. By Martin J. Burke. Chicago &; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995; pp. xvii + 303. $47.50; paper $16.95.

“IN A PERILOUS HOUR”: THE PUBLIC ADDRESS OFJOHN F. KENNEDY. By Steven R. Goldzwig and George N. Dionisopoulos. Westport: Greenwood Publishing, 1995; pp. xv + 219. $59.95.

THE END OF VICTORY CULTURE: COLD WAR AMERICA AND THE DISILLUSIONING OF A GENERATION. By Tom Engelhardt. New York: Basic Books, 1995; pp. iii + 351. $29.95; paper, $14.00.

I'VE GOT THE LIGHT OF FREEDOM: THE ORGANIZING TRADITION AND THE MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM STRUGGLE. By Charles M. Payne. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995; pp. xiii + 525. $28.00; paper $16.95.

AFRICAN‐AMERICAN ORATORS: A BIO‐CRITICAL SOURCEBOOK. Edited by Richard W. Leeman. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996; pp. xxv + 452. $95.00.