Helping Teachers Support Pupils with Mental Health Problems Through Inter-professional Collaboration: A Qualitative Study of Teachers and School Principals

ABSTRACT

A qualitative study conducted in four lower secondary schools in Norway explored teachers’ and school principals’ experiences of collaboration with a variety of extended services (ES). Particular attention was directed to the ways (if any) they perceived collaboration to be relevant to helping teachers support pupils with mental health problems through their everyday social and pedagogic practices. Findings of the study indicated that teachers valued initiatives that could help develop mutual understandings of teachers’ and ES professionals’ roles and responsibilities. Initiatives to build inter-professional relationships were perceived as laying the foundation for more productive collaboration. However, to be able to provide coherent, sustained support in the classroom, teachers needed guidance from ES professionals. This required a shift in collaborative processes away from a focus on individualized pupil support towards helping teachers support pupils through their classroom-based social and pedagogical practices. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Short-Term Effects of Field Programme on Students’ Knowledge and Attitude Toward Biology: a Slovak Experience

Field trips are ideal for increasing students’ experience and perceptions of various organisms and their relationship between the original habitat. However, in general field trips are greatly neglected by teachers and their short-term effects are thought to be questionable. Therefore, we conducted a one-day field trip for both improving students’ knowledge in ecology and for examining short-term effects. Based on the results of the research conducted 3 days after the trip, we found a significant and positive increase in students’ attitudes toward biology, natural environment outside and future career in biology. Moreover, students displayed a better understanding of ecology concepts like ecosystems and food webs. However, no similar pattern was observed for the control group experienced only traditional biology settings. Thus, this study is unique showing significant short-term effects of a field trip on students’ attitude and knowledge toward biology.     

Internal branding in higher education: dialectical tensions underlying the discursive legitimation of a new brand of student diversity

ABSTRACT

Most studies on branding in higher education focus on external branding or image-building towards external stakeholders such as students. Internal branding is an underexplored topic, even though it should be considered as important as external branding. Internal branding is about achieving the necessary internal support for the external brand. Drawing on the theoretical concept of discursive legitimation, we explore the strategies that contribute to an internally supported new brand with student diversity as brand value. We conducted a case study of a Flemish university college that has (largely) succeeded in achieving internal support for its new external brand of student diversity. Analyzing the case from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis, we specifically zoomed in on the dialectical tensions underlying the discursive legitimation of this new brand. We identified three specific tensions, which illustrate the inherent complexity of the internal branding process: authorization as (dis)empowerment, normalization as (dis)empowerment and moralization as (dis)empowerment.     

Turkish School Counselors and Counselor Educators’ Perceptions about Multicultural Counseling

This paper examines the topic of multicultural counseling in Turkey, where school-based multicultural counseling services remain comparatively limited in scope and application. Participants consisted of twenty-three counselors working in secondary or high schools and fourteen counselor educators from several state universities. While the participants expressed mostly positive attitudes towards multicultural counseling, school counselors tended to regard it only as a client-focused, acculturation process. Not unexpectedly, counselor educators approached the process mainly in terms of how to effectively apply it toward various minority groups in Turkey.     

The Dynamics of Preschoolers' Categorization Choices

The present research explored the effects of stimulus and task factors on preschoolers' (Experiments 1 and 3) and adults' (Experiment 2) tendency to categorize according to taxonomic relations, when those relations conflict with appearances. In Experiment 1, we examined the effects of and interactions among ( a ) available information, operationalized by using more- or less-informative stimulus types (objects vs. line drawings) and by the presence or absence of labeling, and ( b ) task constraints, operationalized by comparing sorting questions with inductive inferences questions. When provided with information that constrained the categorization decision, either through the availability of labels or a combination of enhanced physical informativeness of objects and an inference question, preschoolers reliably based their categorization decisions on taxonomic relations between physically dissimilar items. In Experiment 2, stimulus type (objects vs. line drawings) was shown to have a similar effect on adults. In Experiment 3, we examined the effects of stimulus type on preschoolers' inductive inferences and accuracy of naming. The effects in the two tasks were closely related, suggesting that the amount of available information affects different responses in similar ways. These data demonstrate the interactive effects of available information and task constraints on categorization decisions.     

Education and symbolic violence in contemporary Turkey

This article examines the perceptions of education in Turkey, which refer to a nebulous package of formal education and a cultured stance. Guided by the literature on symbolic violence, we argue that underprivileged groups misrecognize arbitrary hierarchies by considering them just and inevitable. Elite tastes have been internalized by other groups in a particular historical context of education and culture. We investigate the historical roots of this seemingly ahistorical constellation of power relations around education and then consider the implications for the neoliberal period. Then, we contextualize the responses to symbolic violence. Subordinate groups complicate the effects of symbolic violence by exhibiting diverse responses that range from outright submission to implicitly questioning cultural and moral boundaries, creating class and ethnic others in the process. This occurs by constructing cultural and moral boundaries, especially targeting the ‘vulgar’ culture of celebrities and Kurds.     

Relationships between learning approach,procrastination and academic achievement amongst first-year university students

Individual differences in student learning influence academic performance, and two aspects influencing the learning process are the particular learning approach the students use and procrastination behaviour. We examined the relationships between learning approaches, procrastination and academic achievement (measured 1 year later as the grade point average (GPA)) amongst 428 first-year university students. Deep and strategic learning approaches positively predicted GPA, and a mediation analysis showed that the strategic learning approach also partly mediated the effect between deep learning approach and GPA. Less procrastination was associated with a strategic learning approach, but procrastination tendencies did not predict GPA. Recommendations are made for educating new students in cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies, helping reduce their procrastination and facilitating the use of deep and strategic learning approaches.     

Prompting teachers’ reflection of their professional knowledge. A proof-of-concept study of the Graphic Assessment of TPACK Instrument

Many educational technology proponents support the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) model as a way to conceptualize teaching with technology, but recent TPACK research shows a need for empirical studies regarding the development of this knowledge. This proof-of-concept study applies mixed-methods to investigate the meta-cognitive awareness produced by teachers who participate in the Graphic Assessment of TPACK Instrument (GATI). This process involves creating graphical representations (circles of differing sizes and the degree of their overlap) that represent what teachers understand to be their current and aspired TPACK. This study documented teachers’ explanations during a think-aloud procedure as they created their GATI figures. The in-depth data from two German teachers who participated in the process captured the details of their experience and demonstrated the potential of the GATI to support teachers in reflecting about their professional knowledge and in determining their own professional development activities. These findings will be informative to future pilot studies involving the larger design of the GATI process, to better understand the role of teachers’ meta-conceptual awareness, and to better ascertain how the GATI might be used to support professional development on a larger scale.     

ICDP approach to awareness-raising about children's rights and preventing violence, child abuse, and neglect

In April 2011, the Committee on the Rights of the Child issued the General Comment No. 13 on the right of the child to freedom from all forms of violence. Its Article 19 declares that "protective measures should, as appropriate, include effective procedures for the establishment of social programs to provide necessary support for the child and for those who have the care of the child." One available social program that focuses on providing support for parents, caregivers and children is the International Child Development Program (ICDP), which is presented in this article. The ICDP is designed to influence and improve the quality of contact and relation between the caregivers, usually parents, and children, through the practical application of the eight themes or guidelines for positive interaction. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a value-based legal document ratified by most countries in the world. This is a significant achievement and it gives a new basis and legitimization for a more humane treatment of children all over the world. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that there is a big gap between a legal document describing ideal conditions for children at a macro-governmental level and its implementation at the microlevel of families and communities. The ICDP is another expression of the same humanitarian spirit as it is encoded in the convention of children' rights. ICDP can be put in practice in any community to create positive conditions for the fulfillment of fundamental children's rights: the right to be protected from violence and to receive the loving care and guidance from the immediate environment which is required to ensure healthy human development. Introducing children's rights is likely to have a major impact on families (and all levels of authorities) if efforts are also made to activate awareness and deeper bonding to children as persons. Without a deep activation of a more humanized and caring relationship to children, provided by social programs such as ICDP, the advocacy for children's rights may become an empty shell without its basis in human realities.