Sharing the arena: Changing roles and negotiating power among teacher education participants

Abstract

This article describes and discusses the changes that took place when a group of university faculty members encouraged the participation of traditionally silent teacher education participants (supervising teachers and teacher education students) in the process of teacher education. The findings of this study include defining the delicate balance between inviting participation, negotiating roles, and sharing power in an arena traditionally reserved for only one group of participants. Participants (including university faculty) are often reluctant to give up the security of their traditional roles; therefore, they have difficulty taking on new roles. Furthermore, there is a continual tug of war between participants because of the constant negotiation and renegotiation of roles, relationships, and power. Traditional ways of interacting on the part of all participants are called into question. Understanding this balance proved to be the foremost difficulty for all participants involved.     

Counselling Issues in Mainstream Schools

This article sets out to consider the definition of counselling, the nature of counselling in educational establishments and the identtties of those in the counselling role in order to examine counselling issues and the implications for a counselling relationship in an educational setting. Although my emphasis is upon mainstream schools, I make reference to my experience in a residential home for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties where I first became aware of the different perceptions and issues regarding counselling.     

DEVELOPING FACULTY THROUGH A UNIVERSITY/COMMUNITY NURSING SERVICE PARTNERSHIP

More people are surviving to old age, which places increasing demands on the health care system and accentuates the importance of developing alternate methods of meeting the unique health care needs of older adults. A university/ community partnership, such as the one described in this article is one example of an innovative, alternate community nursing service. The program provides home health services; gerontological teaching, research, and practice opportunities for faculty; and expanded gerontological clinical experiences for nursing students. Critical elements of program development are discussed and recommendations for similar programs are given.     

A discriminant analysis of television viewers and nonviewers

In 1993, only 0.8 percent of Brazilian households were connected to cable TV, even though 81 percent of all homes had at least one television set. In 1996, the number of cable households had climbed to almost 5 percent, an impressive growth, but still disappointing when compared to the average of 11 percent of cable households in Latin America. This examination of the problem will explore why cable TV's growth has been slow in Brazil.     

Examining Different Forms of Implementation and in Early Childhood Curriculum Research

The purpose of this study was to examine different approaches to assessing implementation in an early childhood curriculum research study. Early childhood teachers in 51 preschool classes located at nationally dispersed sites implemented the Children's School Success curriculum for a school year. Structural (proportion of curriculum delivered) and process (quality of delivery of curriculum) measures of implementation were collected for the literacy, math, and social components of the curriculum. Also, a multiplicative composite score incorporating information from the structural and process measures was calculated. Site differences occurred for the process measure, but not the structural and composite measures. Analysis of the process implementation measures collected across time revealed primarily stable trends across sites. Significant associations were found between measures of implementation and some of the child outcome variables, with the different forms of implementation associated with different outcome variables.     

Principles under pressure: student teachers' perspectives on final teaching practice in early childhood classrooms

Global concerns about what constitutes an appropriate curriculum and pedagogy for young children inevitably raises questions for teacher educators and the content of teacher education programmes. These concerns have been particularly visible in England following recent policy initiatives and the resultant ‘academic shovedown’ and ‘high stakes’ performativity culture in schools. Against this background, this article reports on a qualitative study of student teachers' experiences of their final teaching practice, identifying pressure from a range of sources to deliver a more formalised curriculum than they were prepared for in their university-based courses. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner among others, we consider the socio-political and -cultural sources of pressure linked through human agency, and the implications of these for teacher educators. The study argues that student teachers of young children may be faced with cognitive and emotional dissonance between the content of university-based training on the one hand, which promotes a developmentally appropriate, play-based approach in keeping with the Early Years Foundation Stage (the statutory curricular framework in England), and the reality of pedagogical practice in early years settings on the other.     

Young learners: teachers' conceptualisation and practice of literacy in Australian preschool contexts

This paper examines how literacy is defined and enacted by teachers in early childhood programmes pointing to the differing ways views of early literacy impact practice. It is argued here that early literacy development during the years before school is dependent on children's experiences of having literacy activities modelled around them and the ways in which adults include them in their everyday literacy interactions. Early childhood teachers reveal differing understandings of early literacy during the years before formal school and this impacts their decisions concerning literacy activities and practice within their preschool rooms. Three early childhood teachers are presented here, through video clips and video-stimulated interviews around their literacy activities with preschool children. They demonstrate a range of practice which is shown to depend on their views of young children's literacy development. These vignettes have implications for further professional discussion and learning.