Constructing a Sense of Purpose and a Professional Teaching Identity: Experiences of Teacher Candidates with Disabilities

Abstract

Using grounded theory, we examined the ways in which undergraduate teacher candidates with disabilities developed a sense of purpose and constructed professional identities. Our findings suggest K-12 experiences with advocacy as well as exclusionary school experiences influenced their emerging professional identities. Resistance to a deficit view of disability was central to teachers’ professional identities and influenced their desire to become “change agents” in their future professions. We describe collegiate experiences that affirmed or presented roadblocks to their career path.     

#4: no routine interventions

In this position paper-one of six care practice papers published by Lamaze International and reprinted here with permission-the benefit of no routine interventions during birth is discussed and presented as an evidence-based practice that helps promote, protect, and support normal birth. The paper is written for childbearing women and their families. It presents evidence related to restrictions on eating and drinking, use of intravenous fluids, continuous electronic fetal monitoring, artificial rupture of the membranes, augmentation of labor, and epidural analgesia. The accompanying commentary-written by an award-winning medical writer-supports and expands on the benefits of no routine interventions during birth. Lamaze International recommends that laboring women avoid restrictions on eating and drinking. The organization also recommends avoidance of IVs, continuous electronic fetal monitoring, epidurals, and efforts to speed up labor, unless a clear indication for their use is evident.     

Criminal Justice Interns’ Observations of Misconduct: An Exploratory Study

In an effort to explore criminal justice interns’ observations of misconduct and reporting patterns of their observations, a survey of criminal justice interns was conducted after their internships were completed. Students from four universities in the South (n = 463) were asked to participate. While only 2 percent of respondents reported observing illegal behavior by criminal justice agency personnel, over half of the respondents reported observing behavior they suspected was illegal; knew to be violations of department policy; or recognized as generally unprofessional behavior.     

Perceptions of communication in a family relationship and the reduction of intergroup prejudice

From a contact theory perspective, links between variation in young adults' perceptions of communication with their grandparents and attitudes towards older adults are examined. The analysis pays particular attention to variation in communication with multiple grandparents, and finds links between that and perceived variability in the older adult population as a whole. More variation in perceptions of communication with grandparents is associated with perceptions of older adults as more heterogeneous. However, variation in grandparent relationships is associated with more negative attitudes towards older adults on measures of attitudinal central tendency. The results are discussed in terms of intergroup communication processes, contact theory and possible interventions to reduce prejudice in this and other contexts.     

Why are we here? Managing the meaning of an organizational mission statement

The purpose of this study was to identify and test the influences that lead individuals to actively manage the meaning of a company Mission Statement. Communication about a company Mission Statement was hypothesized to be a function of an individual's information environment, level of work unit commitment, trust in management, and organizational role. The Management of Meaning Scale (MMS) was developed to assess specific meaning management behaviors. The MMS was cast as the chief dependent variable in a path analysis using LISREL. The general model was well supported. Implications for practices associated with Mission Statement implementation are discussed.     

TEACHER CANDIDATES' ACCURACY OF BELIEFS REGARDING CHILDHOOD INTERVENTIONS

The authors examined the beliefs of 351 teacher candidates, from various levels of training, regarding the effectiveness of potential interventions for childhood disorders. They were primarily interested in participants' responses to three categories of interventions: (a) evidence-based, (b) controversial, and (c) primarily anecdotal. They found that the participants' endorsement levels across three types of disorders (autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD], and dyslexia) varied but not in a consistent manner, with only a few noticeable trends across interventions. Furthermore, respondents tended to endorse interventions, whether evidence-based or not, without admitted prior exposure to information about them. The results suggest that more attention should be paid to teaching critical evaluation skills as a part of preliminary training of future educators. The potential for practicing teachers, who often serve as a readily available consultant for parents of children with disabilities, to pass on misinformation poses a potential dilemma that should be addressed in teacher training programs.     

Preparing general educators to teach in inclusive classrooms: Some food for thought

Abstract

Teacher education programs designed to prepare general education classroom teachers to teach in classrooms that include students with disabilities should be developed based on current research into the variables that are key to the successful inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classroom settings. The authors attempt to build a bridge from research to practice by describing one such research project, presenting some of its findings, and offering some food for thought on designing teacher preparation programs.     

The rhetorical limits of the “plastic body”

This essay analyzes the “plastic body” as it is produced in the discourse of plastic surgery. The contemporary industry has constructed a popular image of plastic surgery as a readily available and personally empowering means to resolve body image issues, on the presumption that any body can become a “better” body. The ideology underlying the industry emerges out of analysis of the rhetoric of surgeons and patients. The rhetorical efforts of amputee “wannabes,” who seek elective amputation and who use arguments similar to those of mainstream plastic surgery applicants, reveal the paradoxes and contradictions in decision‐making about who has access to these procedures. The essay concludes that the concept of the plastic body is based less on medical technology and skill than on rhetorical power and suggests that this body of discourse has important implications for medical and technological advances that have enlarged the possibilities for body alteration practices.     

Speaking of books

Clinical Experiences in Teaching for the Student Teacher or Intern. Edgar M. Tanruther. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, Inc., 1967, 297 pp. Paper $4.50.

Education in a Free Society: An American History. S. Alexander Rippa. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1967. 369 pp. $3.75.

Education of the Disadvantaged. A. Harry Passow, Miriam Goldberg, and. Abraham J. Tannenbaum, editors. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1967. 497 pp. $7.95.

Programmed Teaching: A Symposium on Automation in Education. Revised edition. Joseph S. Roucek, editor. New York: Philosophical Library, 1965. x, 195 pp. $10.00.

The Friend of the Singing One, E. C. Foster and Slim Williams. Illustrated by Fermin Rocker. New York: Atheneum, 1967. 122 pp. $3.75.