Scale of attitudes of schoolchildren towards immigrant pupils

In the academic year 2004–2005, approximately 400,000 immigrant pupils were enrolled in Spanish schools and six-form colleges. The racial and ethnic diversity that Spanish society and schools present could be a source of new opportunities and social enrichment, for the national as well as the immigrant population. However, this contact between nationals and immigrants is not free of problems. School is one of the areas where attitudes towards different social groups begin to be formed, while at the same time being the main opportunity that our society has to create an environment of coexistence and attitudinal change. The first step to look at such a complex phenomenon in more detail is to have evaluation tools available that allow us to measure it. In this article we present the results referring to psychometric features, and we carry out a differential analysis of the Scale of attitudes of school-children towards immigrant pupils.     

Pa’lante,siempre pa’lante: pedagogies of the home among Puerto Rican college educated families

Research focused on Latinas/os in higher education often examines patterns of failure, while neglecting factors that contribute to Latina/o generational familial success. This article focuses on intergenerational strategies taught within college-educated Puerto Rican households that assist in academic achievement and success in higher education. Delgado Bernal theorized pedagogies of the home to explain co-constructed cultural knowledge within Chicana/o households to challenge deficit perspectives. Through analysis of educational oral histories of four college-educated Puerto Rican families, pedagogies of the home are extended. The Puerto Rican college-educated children demonstrate sin pelos en la lengua (without mincing words), contradictions among college completers, and pa’lante siempre pa’lante (always moving forward) as strategies employed in navigating higher education. In rearticulating, pedagogies of the home for the Puerto Rican community, institutions of higher education can better respond to the various experiences of Latinas/os.     

The effects of working conditions on teacher retention

Teacher attrition is one of the driving contributors to the shortage of effective teachers internationally and in the United States. The common factors that spur teachers worldwide to leave the profession include low salaries, quality of teacher preparation programs, overwhelming workload, and poor working conditions. In this study, we analyzed three years of Arizona public schools’ teacher retention data and quantitative and qualitative working conditions survey data to understand the relationship between attrition patterns, perceived working conditions at their schools, and the characteristics of the schools where they were employed. We compared attrition rates in schools with different student demographic compositions and related these differences to working conditions as perceived by teachers in these schools. We found that schools where teachers rated their working conditions as more satisfactory had lower attrition rates and also were schools with higher rates of low-income and/or minority students. This findings support the hypothesis of working conditions being a mediating factor in the interplay between school demographics and teacher attrition. We document patterns of teacher retention rates across schools with different student demographics and discuss implications for policy.     

The Intersectionality of Culturally Responsive Teaching and Performance Poetry: Validating Secondary Latino Youth and Their Community

In this article the authors draw from culturally responsive teaching and multicultural education to describe performance poetry as an effective strategy for validating secondary aged Latino youths’ lived experiences. Supported by teacher modeling and the incorporation of community poets, students created and shared their own powerful poems that provided authentic opportunities to engage in critical analysis of the poems and issues of equality, social justice, and equity. Performance poetry is successfully used as a tool for validation, honoring and learning from our community, and transformation. Students in this border community were validated in terms of the identities as members of multiple worlds, learned about their own neighborhood from community poets, and were transformed in their identities as community activists through performance poetry. However, in this era of standardized teaching and high-stakes testing, teaching through performance poetry is often not supported in schools.     

Towards using transformative education as a benchmark for clarifying differences and similarities between Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development

The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) charges educators with a key role in developing and ‘securing sustainable life chances, aspirations and futures for young people’. Environmental Education (EE) and ESD share a vision of quality education and a society that lives in balance with Earth’s carrying capacity, even as they differ in terms of expectations of how that vision is realized, and what might need to be balanced. Rather than treat EE and ESD as sparing partners or fellow travellers towards the same destination, this paper analyses EE and ESD from the perspective of transformative educational goals. Using these goals as a benchmark transcends immediate problems with either form of education, while also helps to clarify policies and practise formations, appropriate to a diversity of educational contexts.     

Going Against the Grain in an Urban Arizona High School: Secondary Preservice Teachers Emerging as Culturally Responsive Educators

This one year study examines the journey of two preservice urban high-school teachers in Arizona as they enact Culturally Responsive Teaching in a year-long student teaching residency. Factors that influenced their Culturally Responsive Teaching practices are discussed along themes that emerged from interviews and classroom observations. Recommendations for ways of integrating Culturally Responsive Teaching in teacher education programs are provided.     

Childhood trauma and psychiatric disorders as correlates of school dropout in a national sample of young adults

The effect of childhood trauma, psychiatric diagnoses, and mental health services on school dropout among U.S.-born and immigrant youth is examined using data from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys, a nationally representative probability sample of African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Asians, Latinos, and non-Latino Whites, including 2,532 young adults, aged 21-29. The dropout prevalence rate was 16% overall, with variation by childhood trauma, childhood psychiatric diagnosis, race/ethnicity, and nativity. Childhood substance and conduct disorders mediated the relation between trauma and school dropout. Likelihood of dropout was decreased for Asians, and increased for African Americans and Latinos, compared to non-Latino Whites as a function of psychiatric disorders and trauma. Timing of U.S. immigration during adolescence increased risk of dropout.