A phenomenographic investigation of teacher conceptions of student engagement in learning

Internationally, educational stakeholders are concerned with the high levels of student disengagement, evidenced by early school leaving, poor student behaviour, and low levels of academic achievement. The solution, student engagement, is a contested concept, theorised in a variety of different ways within academic literature. To further understand this concept, a phenomenographic study was conducted to map secondary school teachers’ conceptions of student engagement. Six qualitatively different ways of understanding student engagement were found. This research indicates that teachers do not hold similar understandings of what student engagement means. If the concept of engagement is to become educationally fruitful, the term must be more explicitly defined in educational research and government policy documents to promote shared understandings amongst stakeholder groups.     

Asking the right questions: An analytic framework for reform of urban teacher education

The second wave of educational excellence reforms has focused on improving teaching and teacher education to restore the nation's economic and industrial health and to reduce poverty in the inner cities. The author examines the theoretical underpinning of the conventional linkage between urban poverty, urban education, and urban teacher education, and suggests an alternative framework. An effective program to train urban teachers must address the bureaucratic conditions that sabotage students and teachers' success and encourage mutually respectful relationships among urban schooling's constituents.     

Development and Use of an Eating Disorder Assessment and Treatment Protocol

Counseling centers have been challenged to effectively treat the growing number of college students who struggle with disordered eating. In response to this critical issue, the authors have developed an Eating Disorder Assessment and Treatment Protocol (EDATP) to assist clinical disposition in the counseling center setting and identify treatment guidelines within a coordinated care approach. Practical applications of the EDATP and future research that can assess its clinical utility are addressed.     

Grief enriched us: a model of perinatal loss support

This article provides an example of the clinical application of one of the Lamaze International's Institute for Normal Birth evidence-based care practices. The practice of keeping mother and baby together, even in unusual circumstances, enhances family relationships and provides for positive lifetime memories.     

Shared book experiences in kindergarten: Helping children come to literacy

Repetitive shared book experiences provided by public school kindergarten staff were used to improve literacy competence and preparation for formal first-grade reading instruction. The entire 1983–1984 kindergarten population (N = 228) of a rural, racially mixed, southeastern school district in South Carolina received eight shared reading experiences for each of three classic children's books. The shared book experience is defined as the situation in which a group of two or three children sit close enough to an adult to see the print as a book is read. Readings were provided by teachers, teacher aides, school volunteers, older students, and audiotapes. The children were individually administered the South Carolina State Department of Education's mandated Cognitive Skills Assessment Battery (Boehm & Slater, 1974) during the first 3 weeks of first grade. The control group, composed of the 1982–1983 kindergarten population (N = 269), had 73% of its children at or above the state cutoff for first-grade readiness, and the experimental group had 83% at or above the cutoff. (T = 22.2, p < .01). In addition, the school district staff reported a 10% increase in the number of children being placed in “top” reading groups. Repetitive, personal shared book experiences were found to enhance literacy awareness and competence, to improve preparation for formal first grade, and to broaden children's literacy interests.     

Gender,masculinity and the new economy

This paper examines the ‘remaking’ of white working class masculinities in the latter quarter of the twentieth century. It draws on ethnographic data gathered at two points in time in order to interrogate the relation of macro-economic and social relations on individual and group identities; to excavate the social psychological relations ‘between’ genders and races, as narrated by white working-class men; and to explore the nuanced variations among these men. Addressing theoretical, empirical and methodological issues associated with these studies, I argue that the remaking of the white working class can only be understood in relation to gendered constructions within itself, the construction of relevant ‘others’, as well as deep shifts in large social formations.     

Improving engagement in an early career academic setting: can existing models guide early career academic support strategies?

ABSTRACT

Early career academics (ECAs) represent the future of the academic workforce, but competition and career uncertainty is resulting in disengagement and burnout. In professions outside academia, increased engagement is associated with perceived organisational support and fair recognition and rewards, as well as opportunities to meet basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. In contrast, decreased engagement is linked with increasing demands on effort and over-commitment to work. The current study used multiple linear regression to test whether comparable relationships were observed in a sample of 151 ECAs in an Australian university. Opportunities to build and demonstrate competence at work, the presence of meaningful relationships and perceived organisational support were independent and statistically significant predictors of engagement. The need for autonomy and fair rewards and recognition appeared to be correlated but not statistically significant predictors of engagement. Contrary to prediction, increasing effort and over-commitment to work did not predict decreases in engagement. These results are discussed in light of implications for programs designed to support the development of ECAs into various career pathways.     

Faculty at work: Focus on teaching

Within the framework of cognitive motivation theory, selected personal and environmental motivational variables for faculty in English, chemistry, and psychology from community colleges, comprehensive colleges and universities, and research universities were regressed against faculty allocation of work effort given to teaching. The data came from a 1988 national survey. Gender (sociodemographic); quality of graduate school attended, career age, and rank (career); self-competence, self-efficacy, institutional commitment, personal interest in teaching, and percent time preferred to give to teaching (self-valuations); and institutional preference, consensus and support, and colleague commitment to teaching (perception of the environment) were entered into regressions.R ² were generally strong (.86 for community college chemists) and significant. For all institutional types, self-valuation and perception of the environment motivators significantly accounted for the explained variance whereas sociodemographic and career variables did not.