“Lafeneline”: Promoting Sexual Health Through College Radio

The authors describe a sexual education program that was aired by the campus radio station at Kansas State University. Use of college radio to promote student health issues is first reviewed. Specific program content and production obstacles are then discussed. Recommendations for future shows are made.     

Measurement of Some Aspects of Critical Thinking

This study investigated the effects of personalization, an offer of survey results, gender, level taught, and location (state) on survey return rates. Six hundred surveys were mailed to public school teachers in Nebraska and Wyoming. The overall return rate was 70.5%. A significant main effect was found for personalization. Also, personalization increased responses to the initial mailing. No other effects were necessary to provide adequate model fit. Results suggest personalization as operationalized in this study to be effective in increasing returns.     

Large-scale implementation of formative assessment practices in an examination-oriented culture

Singapore’s education system has often been characterised as exam-oriented. This paper describes efforts (‘windmills’) made by the Government to constructively respond to the ‘winds of change’ in the education system. A committee called the Primary Education Review and Implementation (PERI) Committee was appointed to study and recommend the priorities, programmes and resources needed to revise primary education in Singapore. The Committee recommended that a balanced school-based assessment system that provides constructive feedback, enabling more meaningful learning in support of both academic and non-academic aspects of a pupil’s development, be carried out under the label of ‘Holistic Assessment’. This paper is an attempt at surfacing the challenges (‘walls’) in implementing ‘Holistic Assessment’ on a large scale, highlighting in particular, the tensions perceived by stakeholders concerning the interaction between formative assessment and accountability systems. It documents how stakeholders, namely teachers and parents, perceive and typify the concept of ‘Holistic Assessment’. The findings provide insights into the consequent realities of a nationwide shift in assessment purpose and discourse on teachers and parents.     

Racial and emotional factors predicting teachers' perceptions of classroom behavioral maladjustment for urban African American male youth

The present study investigated the predictive influence of students' reactive emotional coping and racial socialization experiences on teachers' perceptions of classroom behavior adjustment problems. Participants were 148 African American male youth attending a secondary school in a large northeastern city. Behavioral outcomes included teacher ratings of student behavioral overactivity in different classroom situations. Results using hierarchical regression analyses show that measures of social rejection sensitivity, anger expression, and racial socialization predict teacher‐observed behavioral overactivity, with overt anger expression being the most powerful predictor. Findings suggest that racial socialization and particular styles of emotional coping are important determinants for teachers' impressions of classroom behavior for some African American adolescent males. Implications for future research and interventions with African American male youth in urban secondary schools are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Gendered transitions,career identities and possible selves: the case of engineering graduates

This article, drawing upon the Paired Peers project, a longitudinal qualitative study (n = 90), examines how seven UK engineering graduates, four women and three men, construct their career identities during the transitionary period from university to work. It explores how gender and the occupational cultures that reside within the sector, and the wider sociocultural context, affect women’s careers identities, choices and trajectories. The longitudinal design, characteristics of the cohort and the theoretical framework of possible selves contribute to the originality of this empirical research. In this paper, we show how female graduates gradually adapted their occupational aspirations and career identities to fit with socio-cultural expectations and how they struggled to construct viable ‘engineering’ selves in the vital career identity development phase of their first years of employment when most female STEM graduates change careers.     

John Dewey’s conception of education: Finding common ground with R. S. Peters and Paulo Freire

John Dewey adopted a child-centered point of view to illuminate aspects of education he believed teacher-centered educators were neglecting, but he did so self-consciously and self-critically, because he also believed that ‘a new order of conceptions leading to new modes of practice’ was needed. Dewey introduced his new conceptions in The Child and the Curriculum and later and more fully in Democracy and Education. Teachers at his Laboratory School in Chicago developed the new modes of practice (1896–1903). In this article, I explore Dewey’s new conception of education and compare it with the apparently opposed views of R. S. Peters and Paulo Freire. In doing so, I show that, despite their criticisms of Dewey, whether explicit (Peters) or implicit (Freire), these influential philosophers, representing quite different traditions in philosophy of education were in substantial agreement with him. I also show that, despite our own differences, as important as they are, seeing teachers and learners at work in a rapidly changing society, now on a global scale, in classrooms which are also changing, driven largely by new technologies, the conception of education Dewey, Peters, and Freire developed can provide us with the foundation we need to understand the changing teacher–learner relationship and the purposes their shared activities serve.