Promising or Potentially Harmful? Suburban School Responses to Racial Change

Over the last several decades, suburban schools have become increasingly more diverse and now must respond to racial change, so that they can successfully educate an increasingly more diverse and multiracial student body. This article analyzes interview responses of administrators, teachers, and staff at 19 schools in six diversifying suburban school districts across the United States to explore how they adapt their policies and practices in response to racial change. Findings indicate that school responses are mixed, with each school adapting some policies that demonstrate promise for creating inclusive, enriching, and academically rigorous environments and other responses that are potentially harmful. Promising responses include facilitating diverse student groupings, modifying curriculum and instruction, developing an inclusive school climate, and implementing diversity efforts with teachers and staff. Potentially harmful responses include isolating English Language Learners, narrowing curriculum to focus on test preparation, developing an exclusionary school climate, and failing to respond at all. Schools with the greatest degree of racial change, strong school leadership, and district support often adopt the most promising responses.     

The Patterns of Religious Struggle Among Undergraduates Attending Evangelical Institutions

Of the 900 religiously affiliated colleges and universities in the United States, a sizable portion (approximately 118) are members of the Council for Christian Colleges &; Universities (CCCU). As members of the CCCU, these institutions have a shared commitment to the academic and spiritual development of their students. However, relatively few studies have included data sets with multi-institutional types and longitudinal data. The purpose of this two-part study was to examine the patterns and predictors of religious struggle among traditional undergraduate students attending evangelical institutions compared to those at three other types of institutions. This article addresses the following question: How does the level of religious struggle change between the freshmen and junior years among college students attending evangelical institutions? A quantitative design using the 2004 and 2007 College Student Beliefs and Values Survey (CSBV)—which was last administered in 2007—with responses from 14,527 students attending evangelical, Catholic, other religious, and nonsectarian institutions was employed. Results indicate that significant differences in the levels and patterns of religious struggle exist between evangelical institutions and other types of institutions. Longitudinal measures revealed that students from evangelical institutions experience higher levels of religious struggle compared to their peers at other types of institutions at the end of their junior year. This article is the first in a two-part series and focuses on the patterns of religious struggle among students attending evangelical institutions.     

Perceptions of the relevance of mathematics and science: Further analysis of an Australian longitudinal study

The media portray girls' achievement in mathematics and science as equal to or better than male performance. This paper reports on a longitudinal study based on Years 7–12. One of the disturbing features of these data is the extremely poor perceptions that students, both male and female, have of performance in mathematics and science in the earlier years of high school. These data suggest the need to examine students' changing perceptions in the transition years from primary school to high school. Despite there having been substantial improvement in girls' perceptions of how they have performed in mathematics and science, proportionately fewer females elect to undertake studies at the higher levels of mathematics, physics and chemistry. The data suggest that year 9 is crucial. The perspective that girls have unequivocally arrived has been challenged.     

An Ecological Momentary Assessment of Burnout,Rejuvenation Strategies,Job Satisfaction,and Quitting Intentions in Childcare Teachers

Guided by affective events theory, the purpose of this study was to examine the temporal aspects of childcare teacher burnout, particularly as to how feelings of exhaustion throughout the day relate to perceptions of end-of-day job satisfaction and quitting intentions. A secondary purpose of the study was to explore the frequency and type of rejuvenation strategies childcare teachers use to relieve perceived stress throughout the day. Ecological momentary assessment procedures were employed for 1 week to assess exhaustion levels (3 times/day), frequencies and types of rejuvenation strategies (3 times/day), and end-of-day job satisfaction perceptions and quitting intentions (1 time/day) among 50 childcare teachers. Results indicated that childcare teachers’ quitting intentions were positively predicted by emotional exhaustion (β?=?0.52) and negatively predicted by overall job satisfaction (β?=??0.28). Short (≤15 min), infrequently used (one to two times/day) physical or cognitive health reprieve strategies were reported by 86?% of teachers as the most effective for reducing daily stress. Findings suggest that daily accounts of burnout and quitting intentions have both exhaustive and restorative properties.     

Uncovering ‘unwelcome truths’ through student voice: teacher inquiry into agency and student assessment literacy

Learner agency is often seen unproblematically as an integral aspect of ‘twenty-first century lifelong learning’. Agency and instrumentalist forms of teacher professional development are problematised through this qualitative case study that explores a teacher’s inquiry into assessment for learning practices. This article illustrates how Teaching as Inquiry can be located as either a process that is purely technicist or replete with potential for teachers to engage with ‘unwelcome truths’. Student voice data that reveal ‘unwelcome truths’ can provide a catalyst for teacher reflection on student positioning in learning relationships. Findings focus on practices of assessment for learning, assessment literacy, agency as a neoliberal construction and the need to interrogate power relations in the classroom for student agency to flourish. Issues around student voice and the democratic participation of students in schooling improvement are discussed. Teaching as Inquiry, that explicitly targets wider non-instrumental goals associated with teacher learning, can be a critical process that addresses the growth of assessment literacy and learner agency in classrooms. It can transcend a linear obsession with easily measured quantifiable shifts in student achievement data.     

Perspective taking,empathic concern,and perceived humanness of people with dementia

Past work has documented the detrimental psychological and health outcomes of negative age stereotypes and dehumanization of older adults. We investigated the role of perspective taking in enhancing positive perceptions of humanness of older individuals with dementia. To manipulate perspective taking, participants either imagined the situation of an older woman with dementia (n = 35), remained objective and detached (n = 37), or received no instructions (n = 35). We measured evidence of impairments of humanness needed to conclude personhood loss for the woman with dementia (i.e., humanness standards). Compared to stay-objective participants, imagine-other and no-instructions participants asked for more evidence of impairments of uniquely human characteristics, but not of human nature characteristics, in order to conclude personhood loss for the woman with dementia. Empathic concern for the woman with dementia mediated this effect. We discuss the importance of studying perceptions of personhood of those with dementia with a focus on the person with dementia and his or her social and personal connections with others. Strategies for developing and maintaining healthy relationships with persons with dementia based on active perspective taking are also discussed.     

The nature of peer sexual health communication among college students enrolled in a human sexuality course

Most young people go to their friends for information on sexuality-related topics, thus it is important to understand the context of these communications so that we may gather insight into sexual values and the underlying emotions and styles of communication. We conducted qualitative weekly surveys regarding discussion of sexual health topics among peers with students enrolled in an undergraduate human sexuality course. A four-stage inductive analysis process was utilized to examine a total number of 824 survey submissions from 102 college students who agreed to participate. Seven relevant common themes emerged: safer sex, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy, feelings about sex, sexual acts, peer support, and peer communication norms. Some perspectives varied between males and females. Life events create opportunities for peers to discuss sexual health with each other. The connection between life events and peer sexual health communication has numerous implications for both research and education.     

A test of the conservation model for autoshaped leverpressing and polydipsia in the rat

This study examined a conservation model (Allison & Mack, 1982) that predicts a linear relation between the weighted sum of two responses, autoshaped leverpressing and polydipsia, and the amount of food delivered on a variable-time schedule. Fifteen rats were assigned randomly to one of three groups. The rats in Group 1 were maintained at 80% of their free-feeding body weights. Those in Group 2 began at 100% but were allowed to lose weight during the experiment. The rats in Group 3 also began at 100% of their free-feeding weights and were maintained at this level. Each group was exposed to five conditions that delivered less food than that consumed during baseline and to one condition that delivered more food. The results did not support the conservation model. Contrary to the model, the decreasing linear relation between the individual responses, or the weighted sum of the responses, and the amount of food delivered was not found for all rats, and some rats responded more when an excessive amount of food was presented than during baseline.     

Burrowing and becoming: teaching writing in uncertain times

What happens when teachers perceive a growing rift between their pedagogical practice and their students’ lived experiences? How do teachers respond to the uncertainty that such a “relevance gap” can create? In a climate in which literacy research is often pressed to address the achievement gap and to contribute to a sense of certainty, this study explored the relevance gap experienced by teachers in their teaching of writing and the ways that teaching with uncertainty contributed to their practice. Situated in theories of curriculum as currere, local knowledge of practice, and pedagogy as assemblage, the article focuses on the theory and practice of four educators who teach writing in very different and diverse contexts. The rhizo-textual analysis of the data inspired a process of making assemblages to explore context, positionality, and power in teachers’ identities as writers and teachers of writing. Two such assemblages are described, one exploring struggle and the other possibility. In the struggles and uncertainties they experienced, each teacher found new possibilities in different places: in the land, in slam poetry, in story, and in film. Our mappings and analyses suggest that teachers can create new pedagogies of becoming for them and their students by burrowing into uncertainty, process, and social critique.     

An examination of the research and training needs in the field of deaf education

THE NATIONAL CENTER on Low-Incidence Disabilities conducted a needs assessment of the research and training needs in the field of deaf education. A total of 331 professionals, parents, administrators, and university faculty responded to the survey. Overall, respondents indicated that the number-one priority was to educate administrators about services that are appropriate for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The second most important concern was how to work within the education system to change it. The third priority was teaching reading strategies. Additional priorities are reported for all respondents, as well as comparisons among the different respondent groups. Implications of the results are presented.