Teacher Research,Action Research: the Logo Action Research Collaborative

Action research is a form of professional inquiry in which the teacher's role is seen as key to educational improvement. This paper describes methodologies developed by the Logo Action Research Collaborative – a national network linking 100 teachers at nine sites – that facilitate and support collaborative inquiry by teachers into their own teaching practices, in order to understand, improve, develop, and incorporate new forms of student assessment, teaching methods, and curriculum. The project focused on the Logo computer language, a powerful learning environment for problem‐solving and mathematical inquiry. The authors provide background information on action research as an evolving discipline. They identify three phases of a year‐long action research cycle, and describe key strategies developed by the project to support teachers in taking on a research frame of mind, identifying areas of concern, and undertaking and completing action research projects. The paper includes several illustrative examples of action research investigations undertaken by teachers, and demonstrates the benefits to the students and teachers involved. It closes by making a case for the potential contribution of action research to current educational reform initiatives and school restructuring.     

Malevolence,stigma, and social distance: Maximizing intergroup differences in HIV/AIDS discourse

This study examined the intergroup language used by young heterosexual Australians in conversations about HIV/AIDS and safe sex. Sixty male and 72 female heterosexuals participated in four‐person facilitated conversations (same‐sex or mixed‐sex) about HIV/AIDS and safe sex, which were recorded and transcribed. We focused on extracts concerning strangers or malevolent individuals who appear to be group members, along with extracts involving foreign national groups. Discourse analysis showed that groups at lower levels of social distance were constructed mainly in terms of individual responsibility. At moderate social distance, stereotypes were more negative, but sub‐typing was common, whereas at the highest levels, people were constructed entirely in intergroup terms. The findings of this study suggest that HTV prevention programs should make reference to all salient outgroups, so as to neutralize communicative strategies that strengthen intergroup boundaries as a means of reducing perceived personal threat of HIV infection.     

“This Right Here Is All About Living”: Communicating the “Common Sense” About Home Stability Through CBPR and Photovoice

Homelessness remains a major problem in the United States as a result of urban deprivation, economic decline, a rise in housing costs, and a decline in blue-collar wages. Meanwhile, the dominant discourses around homelessness tend to frame the matter in terms of individual deviance rather than structural impediments. This study utilizes Community-Based Participatory Research and the photovoice method to articulate what a small number of “successfully home stable individuals” attribute to helping them to remain home stable as well as those factors that challenge this situation. The study analyzes how these attributions challenge the “common sense” about homelessness by refiguring the concept as a reintegration process with manifold causes and paths into and out of episodic home instability and giving voice to formerly homeless individuals who are successfully navigating reintegration into housed society.     

Children's creative potential: An empirical study of measurement issues

Relations between measures of creative potential and different scoring methods were examined in 154 French schoolchildren. The Test for Creative Thinking — Drawing Production (TCT-DP), parallel lines task from the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking, and an object-based creative drawing task were used. Factor analysis of TCT-DP subscores showed an originality factor and an appropriateness factor. The relations between these factors, judge's creativity ratings of the same drawings, and statistical originality scores based on the frequency of elements in the drawings were tested by means of a LISREL model. Moreover, TCT-DP scores correlated positively but weakly with performance in the parallel lines task and the object-based drawing task.     

Reacting to poverty: A comparative analysis of schools in Brazilian deprived areas

Schools in the most deprived areas in Brazil are marked by extreme poverty, a situation that has obvious consequences for the everyday life in schools and for efforts to develop a supportive culture of schooling. Nevertheless, schools’ responses to poverty are far from uniform. Although the context of poverty generally determines what is possible for schools to achieve, this context is by no means consistent. Not all schools located in poor areas offer poor education. And, in themselves, unfavourable contexts do not necessarily generate educational failure. This article captures the diversity of effects generated by poverty at the school level, and the variety of responses by schools situated in very similar socioeconomic and cultural contexts. It draws on a study conducted in the state of Minas Gerais, which explored five schools and their corresponding cultures to reveal the diverse effects of poverty at the school level.     

Pedagogical innovation and music education in Spain: Introducing the Dalcroze method in Catalonia

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the Dalcroze method was introduced to Spain and became known there, more specifically in the Catalonia of the Noucentisme movement, and why it made the greatest impact and was more widely disseminated in this particular region of Spain. Following a summary of Dalcroze’s contributions to music education, an outline is given of how the Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios or Committee for Extended Studies (the JAE, in Spanish) became a springboard for the method’s introduction in Catalonia through a grant awarded to Catalan musician and teacher Joan Llongueras Badía, even though the JAE had not shown much interest in its diffusion. It goes on to explain how the method’s use spread in Catalonia, partly thanks to the efforts of Joan Llongueras and his Institute for Rhythmic Gymnastics and partly as a result of the support that these efforts received in the political, philosophical, moral and aesthetic context of the Noucentisme movement – which, the paper argues, explains why the method’s impact was much greater in Catalonia than in the rest of Spain.