Staff development for raising attainment: a practitioner's view of what works

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a practitioner's view of how continuing professional development (CPD) can help raise achievement in schools. It is one of four papers in this issue linked to a research project in Stoke-on-Trent seeking to raise attainment in schools in deprived communicates. Based on over 20 years’ experience working in and with different schools in the UK, this paper frames a head teacher's perspective, outlining seven strategies she believes are key to improving school performance. These strategies are providing CPD opportunities to all staff rather than just those involved in teaching, planning CPD activities in the light of school development priorities, mentoring and coaching between staff, forming inter-school networks and partnerships, team teaching, peer review and continual assessment of CPD impact.     

Learning from the Past: An account of an oral history project for students in an early childhood teacher education program

Engagement of student-teachers with the community of practice they are entering is central to the formation of their identity as an educator. This paper outlines a teaching and research project that enabled early childhood student-teachers to gain insights into the field through interviewing past teachers and reflecting on their practices. In the process, students became aware of the complexities of their chosen profession, alternative teaching practices and different ways of relating with families. Their responses indicated that the experience had an impact on their identity with the profession, their learning about the nature of history and their understanding of research processes.     

Puberty Predicts Approach But Not Avoidance on the Iowa Gambling Task in a Multinational Sample

According to the dual systems model of adolescent risk taking, sensation seeking and impulse control follow different developmental trajectories across adolescence and are governed by two different brain systems. The authors tested whether different underlying processes also drive age differences in reward approach and cost avoidance. Using a modified Iowa Gambling Task in a multinational, cross‐sectional sample of 3,234 adolescents (ages 9–17; M = 12.87, SD = 2.36), pubertal maturation, but not age, predicted reward approach, mediated through higher sensation seeking. In contrast, age, but not pubertal maturation, predicted increased cost avoidance, mediated through greater impulse control. These findings add to evidence that adolescent behavior is best understood as the product of two interacting, but independently developing, brain systems.     

Emotional Support Consistency and Teacher–Child Relationships Forecast Social Competence and Problem Behaviors in Prekindergarten and Kindergarten

Teachers' ratings of conflict and closeness as well as observed emotional support are known predictors of children's social functioning. Consistency in emotional support represents an emerging line of research. The goal of the present study is to understand whether the relation between the consistency of teachers' emotional support and children's behavior is mediated by teacher–child relationships. The role of gender is also considered. Using MPlus, the present study examines the indirect effect of emotional support consistency in prekindergarten on children's social competence and problem behaviors. Outcomes are extended to kindergarten to test the lasting association between the prekindergarten social environment and child behavior in the kindergarten year. Multigroup models examine gender differences. Research Findings: Observations of 694 prekindergarten classrooms revealed that teachers' emotional support consistency had an indirect effect on social competence and problem behavior through conflict in the teacher–child relationship in prekindergarten and kindergarten. The indirect effect on prekindergarten problem behaviors through conflict was stronger for boys. For closeness, all outcomes were significant with the exception of the indirect effect on problem behaviors in the kindergarten year. Practice or Policy: Consistency in prekindergarten teachers' emotional support has an indirect effect on children's behavior in prekindergarten and the following year in kindergarten through teacher–child relationships. Improving teachers' emotional support consistency may be 1 avenue for strengthening teacher–child relationships.     

A Longitudinal Investigation of Chimpanzees' Understanding of Visual Perception

Seven chimpanzees were tested for their understanding of the intentional aspect of visual perception at 5 – 6 years of age and again at 7 years of age. They appeared not to understand that they should use a species-typical, visually based begging gesture in front of someone who could see them, as opposed to someone who could not. Four experiments that were conducted when these same subjects were adolescents are reported here. The results suggest that there was no development between 5 and 9 years of age in the animals' understanding of visual perception as an internal state of attention. The subjects appeared to learn procedural, stimulus-based rules related to the frontal orientation, the face, and the eyes of the experimenters. Even subjects most adept at these tasks appeared to rely on stimulus-based rule structures, not an attribution of seeing.     

Student teachers report on the influence of cultural values on classroom practice and community involvement: Perspectives from the Navajo reservation and from abroad

Abstract

Student teachers in schools on the Navajo Reservation and seven foreign nations reported on the influence of host culture values, beliefs, and traditions on their classroom practice and community involvement. Among the values they identified were traditional lifestyle, clan/family, sharing/reciprocity, superstitions/taboos, sports/competition, and education. Furthermore, the student teachers described their application of these values in a range of professional, social, and personal ways. The combined data demonstrate that cultural study and learning can and should be an integral part of teacher education programs, including the field‐based components. Requiring student teachers to examine the values operating in their placement communities and to seek ways in which they can incorporate these values into their own actions prepares them to become culturally responsive educators who will embrace the diversity in schools and communities.     

‘It’s just what I like’: explaining persistent patterns of gender stratification in the life choices of college students

College students often use the rhetoric of individualism to explain their choice of major. Ethnographic interviews of male and female students reveal that students’ choices are gendered. Men’s decisions focus more on future earning potential and less on personal interest. Most women believe they can choose their major without concern for future income‐earning potential, because they plan to assume a traditional, feminine role of a non‐working wife and mother with a gainfully employed spouse.