Community of practice versus community of readers: the literacy tutors’ dilemma

This paper describes a journey undertaken by literacy tutors who were caught between incompatible values and needs in building apprentices’ literacy. The highly literate tutors were committed to teaching critical literacy. They believed that improved literacy could support learners’ aspirations to advance their prospects at work, build their connections within their community and improve their health. Hence, the tutors aimed to guide their learners into membership of an imagined community of fluent readers. They found, however, that the apprentices, along with their managers and training coordinators, saw literacy as instrumental rather than a desired outcome in its own right. Essentially, achieving a sufficient level of literacy was needed for the apprentices to become members of workplace communities of practice. Tutors then questioned their prior assumptions about the intrinsic importance of literacy, slowly accepting a dichotomous way of thinking where industrial ways of learning and knowing were predominant. Tutors’ realisation that apprentices already possessed embodied and oral literacies helped them to support the apprentices in escaping (though not leaving) workplace contexts that were becoming increasingly document-driven in character and featuring rising expectations of improved print literacy.     

Impact of the Good Behavior Game on special education teachers

This study tested effects of a program that offers teachers universal classroom management strategies, on teachers’ burnout symptoms and self-efficacy, and their teaching behaviors. Data were collected from 147 teachers (mean age = 38.4 years, SD = 10.8) in 15 special secondary education schools for students with emotional and behavioral problems, at the start and end of the school year. Schools were randomly assigned to the experimental condition or a care-as-usual condition. Results show that the program impacted beneficially on self-reported levels of emotional exhaustion, and self-efficacy in engaging students and in classroom management, but not on teaching behaviors. Implications of this study for the professional development of teachers in special education and research are discussed.     

Sources of academic and self-regulatory efficacy beliefs of entering middle school students

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of Bandura’s (1997) hypothesized sources of self-efficacy on the academic and self-regulatory efficacy beliefs of entering middle school students (N = 263) and to explore whether these sources differ as a function of gender, reading ability, and race/ethnicity. For the full sample, mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasions, and physiological state independently predicted academic and self-regulatory self-efficacy, with mastery experience proving the strongest predictor. Mastery experience and social persuasions predicted girls’ academic and self-regulatory self-efficacy, whereas mastery and vicarious experiences predicted these self-beliefs for boys. African American students’ mastery experiences and social persuasions predicted their academic self-efficacy. Mastery experience did not predict the self-efficacy beliefs of low-achieving students. Findings support and refine the theoretical tenets of Bandura’s social cognitive theory.     

Critical Ethnography/Poststructuralist Concerns: Foucault and the Play of Memory

Critical ethnography regards research as action taken in the interests of those who are rendered marginal by the dominant culture and often relies upon narrative knowledge as a way to speak to issues of power and equity. Following Foucault and the suspicion he brings to any knowledge, narrative or otherwise, being a means of extending not mitigating existing relations of power, how can/might critical ethnography respond to or thwart this concern? Drawing and reflecting upon two memoirs discovered by Foucault as exemplars of a kind of "weak knowledge" and in a more general sense, examining the transformative and disruptive role memory can play, illuminates one way of approaching such work.     

Construct validity of the learning behavior scale with an independent sample of students

In this study, the factor structure of the Learning Behavior Scale (LBS; McDermott, Green, Francis, & Stott, 1999) was examined in an independent sample of 257 elementary school students. The LBS is a 29‐item, four‐factor scale on which teachers rate students' positive and negative learning behaviors. The results indicated that the internal consistency of the total LBS scores and the scores on two subscales (Competence Motivation and Attitude Toward Learning) were high enough for individual decision making, whereas the reliability estimates of scores on the Attention/Persistence and Strategy/Flexibility subscales were appropriate only for research or screening purposes. Factor analyses extracted factors similar to three of the factors on the LBS (Competence Motivation, Attitude Toward Learning, and Strategy/Flexibility), and suggested that the fourth factor (Attention/Persistence) may benefit from additional study. In general, the results indicate that the LBS may be a useful tool for examining students' learning behaviors. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Developmental trajectories of externalizing behaviors in childhood and adolescence

This article describes the average and group-based developmental trajectories of aggression, opposition, property violations, and status violations using parent reports of externalizing behaviors on a longitudinal multiple birth cohort study of 2,076 children aged 4 to 18 years. Trajectories were estimated from multilevel growth curve analyses and semiparametric mixture models. Overall, males showed higher levels of externalizing behavior than did females. Aggression, opposition, and property violations decreased on average, whereas status violations increased over time. Group-based trajectories followed the shape of the average curves at different levels and were similar for males and females. The trajectories found in this study provide a basis against which deviations from the expected developmental course can be identified and classified as deviant or nondeviant.     

Self‐recording as a Means of Improving Classroom Behaviour in the Secondary School

Two experiments are reported in which children's study behaviour was manipulated systematically within a behavioural paradigm. Both studies were carried out in the remedial department of a large, modern Secondary school in England by a woman teacher. The first involved an individual, a boy whose study behaviour was controlled using self‐recording in a reversal design. On‐task behaviour increased whilst maladaptive responses were reduced and there was a pronounced improvement in the boy's attitude to school work. The second study was a group intervention employing self‐recording which was again successful in improving the on‐task behaviour rate. At the same time it proved possible to gain measures which show clear evidence of improvement in both the quality and quantity of written work produced by the group. In both studies there was some evidence of generalisation of effects.