The role of mediating organizations for school reform: independent agents or district dependents?

This paper examines the role of mediating organizations in helping schools engage in whole school change as part of a school district's reform agenda. Specifically, it examines the Learning Community Program in Los Angeles, a programme designed by an external school reform organization, to assist schools in planning and implementing LEARN (Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now). The programme's success is shaped by the district and school contexts in which it operates. As mediating agent, the Learning Community Program must balance the challenges facing the schools ‐‐ particularly their readiness to engage in reform ‐‐ with the demands of the district for scale, accountability and resources. As it does so, it faces the challenges of maintaining program flexibility, building sustainable changes, and preserving its organizational independence. These pressures generate three central dilemmas and threaten to undermine the success of the district's reform and the Learning Community Program ‐‐ scale versus sustainability, district mandates versus site autonomy, and organizational independence versus survival. It concludes that mediating agencies can be constrained by their dependence on policymakers for critical resources.     

“A Chance Child”: Jill Paton Walsh and the Re-Invention of the Time Slip Story

In this study of Jill Paton Walsh’s one time-slip novel, I attempt to show how she reinvents the genre by giving as much prominence to the dislocated present as she does to the sufferings of children caught up in the horrors of the Industrial Revolution. Where previous time-slip authors had concentrated on the past, she addresses clearly unwelcome changes to landscapes and townscapes in the present time of the novel.     

Specialising as a SUPER teacher

Underachievement amongst the lowest social classes, and, in particular, amongst what has now become recognised as the underclass, is one of the education system's most enduring problems. It was highlighted over thirty years ago by the Plowden Report (CACE, 1967), whose recommendations for raising standards in the primary sector in socially disadvantaged areas were incorporated into the implementation of what was initially known as the Educational Priority Area (EPA), and later renamed the Social Priority Area (SPA), initiative.     

Modeling aspects of print-processing skill: implications for reading assessment

This study examined how well elementary students?? performance on a set of commonly-used reading assessments conformed to a model of automatic print processing. The assessments included measures of word recognition-untimed, word recognition-timed, oral reading accuracy, oral reading rate, silent reading rate, and spelling. The proposed print-processing model, based on the work of Perfetti (1992) and Share (1995), held that contextual reading accuracy is directly related to automatized word knowledge which is directly related to reading rate. Structural equation modeling showed that the performance data had an acceptable fit to the proposed model and to a second, post hoc model in which automatic word recognition is directly related to contextual reading accuracy. However, additional regression analyses tended to favor the initial model. Because the six print-processing components in this study proved to be reliable and related, and because two of the components (word recognition?Ctimed and spelling) are seldom used in conventional reading assessments, the results have important implications for practice.     

Contexts of educational policy change in Botswana and South Africa

This article examines how different histories and contexts of political and educational change in Botswana and South Africa have shaped the more regular classroom practice observed in Botswana. It does this through an interpretive synthesis and comparison of four key moments of educational change in Botswana and South Africa during the twentieth century, followed by an examination of more recent curriculum and assessment, teacher education, supervision, and evaluation policy in each country. The article highlights differences in decolonization processes and similarities in economic conditions and spending on education. It shows that processes of educational change have been and continue to be marked by the respectively different histories of gradual and incremental change on the one hand, and rapid, disruptive change on the other. And while recent curriculum and assessment policies show convergence with one another, this is less the case with teacher policies and processes.     

Mexican-Origin Youth's Cultural Orientations and Adjustment: Changes From Early to Late Adolescence

Drawing from developmental and cultural adaptation perspectives and using a longitudinal design, this study examined: (a) mean‐level changes in Mexican‐origin adolescents’ cultural orientations and adjustment from early to late adolescence and (b) bidirectional associations between cultural orientations and adjustment using a cross‐lag panel model. Participants included 246 Mexican‐origin, predominantly immigrant families that participated in home interviews and a series of nightly phone calls when target adolescents were 12 and 18 years of age. Girls exhibited more pronounced declines in traditional gender role attitudes than did boys, and all youth declined in familism values, time spent with family, and involvement in Mexican culture. Bidirectional relations between cultural orientations and adjustment emerged, and some associations were moderated by adolescent nativity and gender.     

Qualitative research in career development: content analysis from 1990 to 2009

A content analysis of 11 journals that published career, vocational, and work-related articles from 1990 to 2009 was conducted. Of 3,279 articles analyzed, 55.9% used quantitative methods and 35.5% were theoretical/conceptual articles. Only 6.3% used qualitative research methods. Among the qualitative empirical studies, standards of academic rigor and procedures that are typically honored within qualitative research were either not followed or were not reported. Fundamental changes need to occur if qualitative research methods are to rise to a higher level of publication and general interest among consumers of career development literature. Recommendations for future training and research are provided.