The Mentoring Profile Inventory: an online professional development resource for cooperating teachers

We report on the origins, development and refinement of an online inventory to help cooperating teachers focus on selected dimensions of their practice. The Mentoring Profile Inventory (MPI) helps quantify important features of both the motivating and challenging aspects of mentoring student teachers and provides results to respondents in a graphic, easy-to-understand and immediate feedback report (14 sub-scales and 3 summary charts). Psychometric properties of the MPI are shown to be robust. Results can be used individually or collectively to facilitate cooperating teacher professional development by providing the opportunity for dialog around a set of common issues.     

Creating spaces to belong: listening to the voice of girls with behavioural,emotional and social difficulties through digital visual and narrative methods

While interest in the voice of children and young people has grown alongside concern for their rights and participation, for those excluded from mainstream education or with a label of behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, the issue of student voice takes on particular relevance. Yet the voices of these young people, and particularly girls, are often hidden and unheard both in education and educational research. Using digital visual and narrative methods we have been listening to girls excluded from mainstream education. They attend Kahlo School, a small special, girl-only secondary provision in the south of England, and our focus has been on gathering their views as stakeholders in the school and engaging them in curriculum and school development. In this paper, we reflect on the affordances of visual and digital methods and on how the girls perceive their educational inclusion and exclusion. We discuss the themes of space, identity, relationships and community that have emerged from analysis of the data, and conclude by outlining the importance of the core messages about belonging and not belonging that we heard in the girls' accounts.     

Virtual Learning Environments in teacher education: a journal,a journey

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in teacher education have a short history which is little longer than that of this journal. Twenty years ago they were the province of early adopters only and limited to email and, more unusually, asynchronous conferencing. Today, VLEs are widespread and mainstream, sophisticated and officially sanctioned components of many courses. Research in this field has borne some of the hallmarks of Underwood’s seminal critique of research in education technology more generally, namely, failure to construct and build upon the history of the field; failure to use the language and theoretical perspectives of the field; a focus on technology rather than on its impact on practice; and an over-reliance on qualitative methods. The three snapshots which are used as a basis of the study show, to an extent, that the technology has moved from unreliable and primitive, to reliable, ambient and versatile. Less obvious in these snapshots are any substantial changes in pedagogy over time although social learning theories seem to have increasing prevalence in support of collaborative learning praxis. Throughout the sample, it is notable that the impact of teachers’ online learning on teaching and learning in schools is still relatively rarely investigated.     

Educational Broadcasting

Bernard Rubin's Media, Politics &;amp; Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977- $8.00/4.00)

Forrest P. Chisman's Attitude Psychology and the Study of Public Opinion (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977—$13.50)

Sidney Kraus, ed. The Great Debates: Kennedy vs. Nixon, 1960 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977—$17.50/5.95)

Jean Schwoebel, Newsroom Democracy: The Case for Independence of the Press (Monograph Series No. 2, Iowa Center for Communication Study, School of Journalism, Yniversity of Iowa, Iowa City 52242—$2.50, paper)

Rex Winsbury, New Technology and the Journalist (Thomson Foundation Editorial Study Centre, Thomson House, Cardiff, CF1 1WR, Great Britain-75p or about $1.25, paper)

Laura Longley Babb, ed. The Editorial Page (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977 &;ndash;price not given, paper)

Bob Roberts, for telling us about Magazine Studies Quarterly (MSQ Ltd., Box 2054, Muncie, Indiana 47302—about $5.00 per year for four issues)

Morgan Harris and Patti Karp's How to Make News and Influence People (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: TAB Books, 1976—$7.95, with a paperback edition available, for which no price given)

Alice Payne Hackett and James Henry Burke's 80 Years of Best Sellers: 1895-1975 (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1977—$14.95)

Mort Walker's Backstage at the Strips (New York: A&;amp;W Publishers, Inc., 95 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016—$6.95, paper)

Peter Haining's Terror: A History of Horror Illustrations from Pulp Magazines (New York: A&;amp;W Publishers, 1977—$12.50/6.95)     

Journalism

IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST-III: A REPORT BY THE NATIONAL NEWS COUNCIL, 1979-4983 (National News Council, 805 Third Ave., New York, NY 10022---$10.00, paper)

VIDEOTEX JOURNALISM: TELETEXT, VIEWDATA, AND THE NEWS by David H. Weaver (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984---$18.00)

THE NEW BUSINESS JOURNALISM: AN INSIDER'S LOOK AT THE WORKINGS OF AMERICA'S BUSINESS PRESS by Don Gussow (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1984---$14.95)

STRAIGHT STUFF: THE REPORTERS, THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE TRUTH by James Deakin (New York: Morrow, 1984---$17.95)

COVERING CAMPAIGNS: JOURNALISM IN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS by Peter Clarke and ' H. Evans (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University 1983---$17.50)

TERRORISM: THE MEDIA AND THE LAW, edited by Abraham H. Miller (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Transnational Publishers, 1982---$25.00, with paperback available)

THE DISSIDENT PRESS: ALTERNATIVE JOURNALISM IN AMERICAN HISTORY by Lauren Kessler (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1984---$8.95, paper)

AGENTS OF POWER: THE ROLE OF THE NEWS MEDIA IN HUMAN AFFAIRS by J. Herbert Altschull (New York: Longman, 1984---$29.95)

THE PROCESS OF ELECTRONIC NEWS GATHERING by Frederick Shook (1982, 180 pp.---no price given, paper)

THE BROADCAST NEWS PROCESS by Frederick Shook and Dan Lattimore (1982, 375 pp.---no price given, spiral bound, plus a short “Instructor's Manual”)     

Tense Futures: The Work of Cultural Studies

Currently, scholars grapple with media that depict Third World women as either victims of unchanging contexts or agents of liberation. To explore how a widely distributed and popular documentary film can destabilize a First World gaze, this essay examines Iron Ladies of Liberia (ILL), which traced Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's first year as president of Liberia. ILL foregrounded women's rhetorical and political agencies to alter a postwar context, while it also situated their agencies within an enabling and constraining constellation of power relationships. Through its unique relationships between filmmaker and subject, ILL suggested a transnational feminist perspective on women in media.     

Back to the future: do lessons from Finland point the way to a return to model schools for Northern Ireland?

The paper examines the school-based element of initial teacher education (ITE) and the ways in which it contributes to the professional learning of student teachers in Finland (University of Helsinki) and Northern Ireland (University of Ulster). In particular it seeks to assess the potential of Training Schools for Northern Ireland. Universities in Finland that provide teacher education have at least one designated training school in which all student teachers have the opportunity to undertake a practicum. The Finnish model was selected for comparison because of the country’s consistently excellent results in the OECD’s Programmes for International Student Assessment which is undoubtedly due, in part, to the quality of the teachers. Teaching/training schools have featured prominently in recent reviews of teacher education in England and Scotland and, while not specifically mentioned in the Northern Ireland (NI) review document, the overall concept could enrich the school-based element of ITE in NI, using existing collaborative networks of schools.     

Enhancing the transition of commencing students into university: an institution-wide approach

The importance of the first year experience (FYE) to success at university is well documented and supported with the transition into university regarded as crucial. While there is also support for the notion that a successful FYE should have a whole-of-institution focus and models have been proposed, many institutions still face challenges in achieving institution-wide FYE program implementation. This paper discusses the origins, theoretical and empirical bases and structure of an institution-wide approach to the FYE. It uses a case study of the Transitions In Project (TIP) at the Queensland University of Technology to illustrate how institution-wide FYE program implementation can be achieved and sustained. The TIP had four interrelated projects focusing on at-risk students, first year curriculum, learning resources and staff development. The key aim of TIP was to identify good practice and institutionalise it in a sustainable way. The degree of success in achieving this is evaluated.