Interventions for resilience in educational settings: challenging policy discourses of risk and vulnerability

‘Resilience’ has become a popular goal in research, social policy, intervention design and implementation. Reinforced by its conceptual and political slipperiness, resilience has become a key construct in school-based, universal interventions that aim to develop it as part of social and emotional competence or emotional well-being. Drawing on a case study of a popular behavioural programme used widely in British and American primary schools, this paper uses a critical social understanding that combines bio-scientific and social constructionist ideas in order to evaluate key challenges for policy, research and practice framed around resilience. The paper argues that although critical social perspectives illuminate important contemporary manifestations of old problems with behavioural interventions, and challenge narrow, moralising definitions of ‘risk’ and ‘vulnerability’, they coalesce with behavioural perspectives in a search for better state-sponsored responses to the shared question of how to build resilience amongst ‘vulnerable’ groups and individuals. Instead, we argue that critical sociologists need to resist responses that offer more sophisticated behavioural interventions and generate new forms of governance and subjectivity.     

Measuring knowledge integration: Validation of four‐year assessments

Science education needs valid, authentic, and efficient assessments. Many typical science assessments primarily measure recall of isolated information. This paper reports on the validation of assessments that measure knowledge integration ability among middle school and high school students. The assessments were administered to 18,729 students in five states. Rasch analyses of the assessments demonstrated satisfactory item fit, item difficulty, test reliability, and person reliability. The study showed that, when appropriately designed, knowledge integration assessments can be balanced between validity and reliability, authenticity and generalizability, and instructional sensitivity and technical quality. Results also showed that, when paired with multiple‐choice items and scored with an effective scoring rubric, constructed‐response items can achieve high reliabilities. Analyses showed that English language learner status and computer use significantly impacted students' science knowledge integration abilities. Students who took the assessment online, which matched the format of content delivery, performed significantly better than students who took the paper‐and‐pencil version. Implications and future directions of research are noted, including refining curriculum materials to meet the needs of diverse students and expanding the range of topics measured by knowledge integration assessments. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 1079–1107, 2011     

Networked texts: discourse,power and gender neutrality in Ugandan physics textbooks

Research within science textbooks has dominantly focused on examining explicit representations of women and men using quantitative methodology. The assumption that gendered arrangements are necessarily explicit and therefore visible and countable, overlooks how power works explicitly and implicitly through discourse to produce specific gendered subjectivities. In taking up feminist post-structuralisms, this study contributes to textbook studies within sciences by illuminating both explicit and implicit representations of gender. Using discourse analysis, ‘gender-neutral’ and/or disembodied subjects and objects were ‘unmasked,’ revealing a generic male and/or masculine subject. Gender-neutrality, which is pervasive within the physics textbooks, was thus exposed as a mask for generic maleness/masculinity. I argue that this objectivist science, which remains compatible with a narrow range of student gendered identities, forecloses possibilities for a wide range of scientist subjectivities, to produce a more inclusive physics curriculum, with a greater possibility of developing physics using diverse subjectivities.     

Classroom Popularity Hierarchy Predicts Prosocial and Aggressive Popularity Norms Across the School Year

This study examined the coevolution of prosocial and aggressive popularity norms with popularity hierarchy (asymmetries in students’ popularity). Cross-lagged-panel analyses were conducted on 2,843 secondary school students (N_classrooms = 120; M_age = 13.18; 51.3% girls). Popularity hierarchy predicted relative change in popularity norms over time, but not vice versa. Specifically, classrooms with few highly popular and many unpopular students increased in aggressive popularity norms at the beginning of the school year and decreased in prosocial popularity norms at the end of the year. Also, strong within-classroom asymmetries in popularity predicted relatively higher aggressive popularity norms. These findings may indicate that hierarchical contexts elicit competition for popularity, with high aggression and low prosocial behavior being seen as valuable tools to achieve popularity.     

Brain‐Based Learning and Educational Neuroscience: Boundary Work

Much attention has been given to “bridging the gap” between neuroscience and educational practice. In order to gain better understanding of the nature of this gap and of possibilities to enable the linking process, we have taken a boundary perspective on these two fields and the brain‐based learning approach, focusing on boundary‐spanning actors, boundary objects, and boundary work. In 26 semistructured interviews, neuroscientists and education professionals were asked about their perceptions in regard to the gap between science and practice and the role they play in creating, managing, and disrupting this boundary. Neuroscientists and education professionals often hold conflicting views and expectations of both brain‐based learning and of each other. This leads us to argue that there are increased prospects for a neuroscientifically informed learning practice if science and practice work together as equal stakeholders in developing and implementing neuroscience research.     

Speech genres and cultural value in the Anglo-American public speaking course as a site of language socialization

Speech genres have a significant role in socializing children and adults not only to speak in culturally appropriate ways but also to present desirable identities. We analyze narratives of self-transformation collected in an undergraduate public speaking course in the United States to learn how the acquisition of public speaking as a speech genre contributes to U.S. students’ language socialization. Our study contributes to two traditions of intercultural communication research, one interested in the context-bound, culturally situated character of Anglo-American speech, and another that seeks to explain how local communication resources, including speech genres, travel across cultural boundaries.     

Read Alouds and Beyond: The Effects of Read Aloud Extension Activities on Vocabulary in Head Start Classrooms

A study was conducted in 26 Head Start classrooms with 264 children to compare the effect of a read aloud plus extension activities intervention over a control group to the effect of a read aloud only intervention over a control group on preschool children's vocabulary. Children were assessed before and after the intervention on target vocabulary and general vocabulary measures. Research Findings: The results suggest that the effects of the read aloud plus intervention were stronger than the effects of the read aloud only intervention on target word learning. In addition, the effects of the read aloud plus intervention on target word learning were stronger for children with higher versus lower general vocabulary knowledge. Neither intervention had an effect on general word knowledge. Practice or Policy: Observation and fidelity data are used to contextualize the findings, and the results are discussed in light of the extant literature on preschool vocabulary interventions.