The Cost of the Veil: Visual Communication Impacts of Hijab on News Judgments

Using disposition theory as a framework, this 2 (headscarf vs. no headscarf) by 2 (US citizen vs. refugee) experiment sought to elucidate the impact of visual and verbal cues in mediated messages on conclusions drawn from a television news package about a woman accused of consorting with a known terrorist group in the US, in terms of parochial empathy for and perceived innocence of the woman. Parochial empathy measures the difference between ingroup and outgroup empathy; higher levels indicate ingroup empathy is greater than outgroup empathy, meaning the individual’s empathy is very narrow in scope or “parochial.” Political identity was a measured independent variable. The data supported a model in which political identity was a significant moderator of the headscarf’s effect on parochial empathy, and that parochial empathy mediated the relationship between the manipulated and measured predictor variables on perceived innocence. Details of the relationships among variables are reported and the implications for theory and journalism practice are discussed.     

Ecologies of Heritage Language Learning in a Multilingual Swedish School

The field of heritage language (HL) education is a rapidly growing area of educational linguistics research and pedagogy. While considerable research has looked at identity in relation to HL learning in adolescents and adults, this article focuses on the identities and language attitudes of young HL learners of Arabic and Somali at an elementary school in Sweden. Analyzed through an ecology of language framework, data reveal that students regard HL as a tool to foster belonging within their multilingual communities, and resist pressures to assimilate within the context of immigration. Findings also suggest that learners’ agency and language use influenced classroom pedagogies, and indicate the promise of a dynamic conception of HL education that affirms the creative use of language to support students’ linguistic and cognitive growth. This article fills a gap in theory and pedagogy, addressing the role of HL learning for the learner, the family, and the local and global community.     

Student performance in teacher education in Norway: the impact of student,institutional and structural factors

Many education systems face a challenge in recruiting graduates as teachers. This is also the situation in Norway and the newest estimates tell us that we will lack 9000 teachers in 2020. The situation is made even worse by the high number of dropouts and low performance rates in teacher education. There are many factors which have an impact on study performance and progress. Some factors are at student level, some at institutional or programme level and others at structural level. In the present article, we will discuss how students attending two different teacher education programmes at a university college in Norway negotiate between their studies and the need to earn money and the consequences this has for their study performance. We focus on student-level factors and how the university college organises its campus programmes. The findings are based on a quantitative study among 401 student teachers.     

“I feel I mean something to someone”: solution-focused brief therapy support groups for bullied schoolchildren

The aim of this study was to investigate how bullied schoolchildren experience solution-focused brief therapy support groups, and to examine how members of the support group experience their participation in the group. An explorative qualitative design, with individual and focus group interviews, was used. The sample consisted of 19 schoolchildren, aged 12–13 years, three of whom were bullied. Six individual interviews were conducted with the bullied children and three focus group interviews were held with the support groups. The bullied children reported that the bullying stopped after they received help from the support group and the improvements remained after three months. Their daily lives at school changed and they felt safer and happier and made friends. Members of the support groups reported that they were doing a meaningful job in helping the victims. It is important that school nurses, educational psychologists and teachers, together with parents, follow up bullied children, to prevent further bullying.     

The educational work of the De la Salle Brothers and popular education in Gipuzkoa in the twentieth century

^{1 1}This article is the result of a research project financed by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Education, project number EDU-2010-15218. The authors are members of the Research Group for Historical and Comparative Studies in Education – Garaian of the University of the Basque Country, recognised by the Basque Government, registry number IT 298/10. Many religious orders and congregations that were deported from France between 1904 and 1914 established themselves in neighbouring countries (Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Spain). One of the affected congregations was Los Hermanos de las Escuelas Cristianas, ^{2 2}The Brothers of Christian Schools which worked in the field of popular education. Many of its members found refuge in the Spanish province of Gipuzkoa, which neighbours France on the Atlantic coast, where it succeeded in establishing and maintaining itself for centuries. Today it is the second most important congregation in terms of the number of schools and teachers in the private school sector. An analysis of this congregation in Gipuzkoa during a 100-year period reveals a considerable increase in schools located in cities and villages with a large industrial sector; with institutions being dispersed throughout the entire province, and a dedication to popular education through vocational training. This training has been one of the most important characteristics of Lasallian pedagogy, and it paralleled the modernisation processes of Gipuzkoan society in the twentieth century.     

Children’s Narrating as a Way of Learning About Other People’s Beliefs in Interaction with Teachers

As a genre of talk, narratives represent important building blocks in children’s learning in many fields. The purpose of the study presented in this article is to examine how teachers can encourage children’s learning about people’s beliefs through narrating. Narratives play an important part in children’s learning to understand other people and how they will act according to what they believe, think or know. This study is based on video observations of six children, 3 and 4 years old, and their spontaneous personal narratives told to teachers over a period of 8 months. The narrative analysis revealed that in most of the narratives the teachers were passive listeners or were concerned about the structure of events. The teachers seldom asked questions about the children’s mental state or disagreed with the child in ways that revealed their different beliefs. Suggestions about implications of this study are that early childhood teacher education should focus on talking with children about what they may think or believe concerning narrated events, and also reveal what they think and believe themselves.