The Responsibilities of White Teacher Candidates and Teacher Educators in Developing Racial Literacy

This article aims to help teacher educators consider how to build racial literacy in their White teacher candidates, providing guidance through pedagogical strategies and approaches based on our and others’ research. In addition, much of the pedagogy that we developed in working with our White teacher candidates can be translated to teachers working with White students at other levels, and it can also help teacher educators develop their own racial literacy.     

Critical corridor talk: Just gossip or stoic resistance? Unrecognised informal Higher Education leadership

This mixed methods paper considers whether or not invisible forms of morally resistant collegial leadership are progressively challenging policy and managerial quasi‐market instrumentalism in a minority of low trust dysfunctional situations in a stratified United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education system. A theoretical model of stoical critical corridor talk (CCT) is proposed, arising from selected empirical data and reflective observations in 2005–2017. The data demonstrated that resistant academic critique is increasingly questioning economically driven command and control authoritarianism. The model builds on the concept of critical being to consider whether or not CCT amongst academics provides informal stoical leadership to alleviate stresses exacerbated by poor management. The highly functioning criticality of negative capability facilitates self‐reflexive resistance against the false necessity of supposedly deterministic imperatives to validate policy‐driven audit‐based managerialism. Yet to foster trust, informal leadership needs to practise correct moral principles itself when resisting performativity in dysfunctional environments in which some overstep the acceptable roles of good management.     

Teaching the partial products algorithm with the concrete representational abstract sequence and the strategic instruction model

Elementary standards include multiplication of single-digit numbers and students advance to solve complex problems and demonstrate procedural fluency in algorithms. The ability to illustrate procedural fluency in algorithms is dependent on the development of understanding and reasoning in multiplication. Development of multiplicative reasoning provides the foundation for advanced mathematics and algebraic reasoning. For students who struggle in mathematics, instruction in multiplication algorithms should ensure conceptual understanding so that students have a foundation for success in advanced mathematics. The concrete representational abstract (CRA) sequence addresses conceptual understanding and the strategic instruction model (SIM) supports procedural knowledge. The current pilot study combined these methods to teach elementary students the partial products algorithm. Twelve students in grades four and five participated in the study, receiving instruction from teachers in their school during an intervention period. Within a pre-experimental design, using pre- and postintervention data, students showed a significant change in performance. The article will describe and show how teachers implemented the CRA-SIM interventions and discuss implications for practice.     

Linking Community,Industry and Tertiary Education Community‐based Student Units in Social Work Education

Professional social work education in Australia requires students to undertake supervised and assessed field practice in addition to theoretical classroom‐based education. Field education placements take place in a wide range of social and community service organisations ‐ often partly funded by these organisations. However, in a climate of economic restraint and cutback, the social and community services sector increasingly looks to education for resources for field education. One solution is the development of student units, especially designed to offer practice‐based experience for students. This paper is motivated by the high value Phillip Institute of Technology places on student units in field education. It addresses the question, “What are student units?”, presents a tentative categorisation of types of social work student units and concludes with a possible framework for evaluation.     

A standardized tool for assessing the quality of classroom-based shared reading: Systematic Assessment of Book Reading (SABR)

Participation in shared-reading experiences is associated with children's language and literacy outcomes, yet few standardized assessments of shared-reading quality exist. The purpose of this study was to describe the psychometric characteristics of the Systematic Assessment of Book Reading (SABR), an observational tool designed to characterize the quality of classroom-based shared-reading sessions in early childhood settings. Participants included 105 preschool teachers. The quality of teachers’ videotaped, whole-class shared-reading sessions was examined using the SABR. Reliability levels for each of the SABRs five constructs were examined, as well as delayed alternate-form reliability and inter-rater reliability. The tools’ factor structure and construct validity were also assessed. Findings provide initial validation and preliminary evidence that the SABR is a reliable and valid tool. Potential uses for early childhood researchers, teachers, and allied professionals are described.     

Community Level Factors and Child Maltreatment Rates

Using census and administrative agency data for 177 urban census tracts, variation in rates of officially reported child maltreatment is found to be related to structural determinants of community social organization: economic and family resources, residential instability, household and age structure, and geographic proximity of neighborhoods to concentrated poverty. Furthermore, child maltreatment rates are found to be intercorrelated with other indicators of the breakdown of community social control and organization. These other indicators are similarly affected by the structural dimensions of neighborhood context. Children who live in neighborhoods that are characterized by poverty, excessive numbers of children per adult resident, population turnover, and the concentration of female-headed families are at highest risk of maltreatment. This analysis suggests that child maltreatment is but one manifestation of community social organization and that its occurrence is related to some of the same underlying macro-social conditions that foster other urban problems.