Resisting the marginalization of science in an urban school: Coactivating social,cultural, material,and strategic resources

This study describes the resources and strategies middle school teachers, urban fellows, and a district science staff developer coactivated to resist the marginalization of science in a high‐poverty, low‐performing urban school. Through critical narrative inquiry, I document factors that marginalized science in three teachers' classrooms. The narratives show that constraints related to cultural, material, and social resources contributed to a more global symbolic resource constraint, the low status and priority of science in the school. The narratives develop a new category of strategic resources embodied or controlled by others and leveraged to improve students' opportunities to learn science. Attention to a broader array of resources, including social, symbolic, and strategic resources, helps to excavate some of the inertial forces that might derail efforts to teach for social justice. The findings provide a sense of how and why teachers might activate resources to resist the marginalization of science in their classrooms. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:840–860, 2010     

Three Walks Through Fictional Fens: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on <Emphasis Type="Italic">Gaffer Samson’s Luck</Emphasis>

The paper discusses the children’s novel Gaffer Samson’s Luck (1984), by Jill Paton Walsh, from three different perspectives; those of a cultural geographer, a literary scholar and an English teacher. It is part of a larger research project on children’s perception of their place-related identities through reading and writing. The novel is used as a case study to develop a multidisciplinary approach, drawing upon theories of literature and reading, and a conceptualisation of space in cultural geography. Employing ideas from different disciplines, the paper offers an original interpretation of the text as well as innovative analytical tools for future research and for classroom application.     

Cheating by economics and business undergraduate students: an exploratory international assessment

Today’s economics and business students are expected to be our future business people and potentially the economic leaders and politicians of tomorrow. Thus, their beliefs and practices are liable to affect the definition of acceptable economics and business ethics. The empirical evaluation of the phenomenon of cheating in academia has almost exclusively focused on the US context, and non-US studies usually only cover a narrow range of countries. This paper presents a comprehensive, cross-country study on the magnitude and determinants of cheating among economics and business undergraduates, involving 7,213 students enrolled in 42 universities located in 21 countries from the American (4), European (14), Africa (2) and Oceania (1) Continents. We found that the average magnitude of copying among economics and business undergraduates is quite high (62%) but there was significant cross-country heterogeneity. The probability of cheating is significantly lower in students enrolled in schools located in the Scandinavian, and the US and British Isles blocks when compared with their Southern European counterparts; quite surprisingly this probability is also lower for the African block. On a distinctly different level, however, students enrolled in schools in Western and especially Eastern European countries reveal statistically significant higher propensities towards committing academic fraud.     

Schooling and local environmental knowledge: Do they complement or substitute each other?

Schooling and the knowledge acquired at school have been considered both a cause of loss of indigenous knowledge (because it opens pathways to the non-indigenous world and worldviews) and a potential remedy to its demise (if educational curricula is aligned with indigenous realities by giving instruction in local languages and incorporating local knowledge in school content). We test the association between academic and local environmental knowledge using data from a society of forager-horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon who were exposed to a partially contextualized school curriculum. We found that although schooling and academic knowledge bear a negative association with local knowledge the magnitude is low, probably because schooling was partially contextualized. Contextualized learning might help avoid that the provision of universal education comes at the cost of humanity's cultural diversity.     

The role of community sports coaches in creating optimal social conditions for life skill development and transferability – a salutogenic perspective

Sport is widely recognised as having the potential to enhance the personal development of socially vulnerable youth, yet there is very limited knowledge on how community sports coaches can create optimal social conditions for life skill development and transferability. We adopt a salutogenic approach in order to study whether and how community sports coaches create these optimal social conditions. Based on the salutogenic framework, a thematic analysis was conducted of 15 in-depth interviews with community sports coaches providing sports lessons to socially vulnerable youth. As part of the interviews, the sports coaches were presented with several training scenarios and asked how they would respond in specific training situations. The results showed that the sports coaches aimed to create meaningful sporting experiences for youths. These meaningful sporting experiences were considered a precondition for keeping youths engaged in the sporting activities, as well as a precondition for life skill development. The sports coaches specifically focused on creating little moments of success and on making sure that the youths felt they belonged to a group. In order to ensure that the youths could experience moments of success, specific coaching strategies were implemented to increase the youths’ comprehensibility and manageability in specific sport situations. According to the sports coaches, experiencing little moments of success could contribute to an increase in socially vulnerable youths’ understanding of the everyday challenges that they face, as well as contribute to their ability to deal with these challenges. Creating meaningful sporting experiences may help youths ‘to learn to cope' – a skill that could be beneficial over their lifespan and in different societal domains.     

Teaching values in physical education classes: the perception of Brazilian teachers

The contribution of Physical Education (PE) and School Sport to learning of values has been identified by teachers and researchers. However, we know little about how that teaching takes place during classes. This study aimed to understand the perceptions of teachers on teaching values in their classes and to analyse the conception of values that have guided their professional intervention. To do this, a qualitative study was conducted with a sample of three teachers, using class observations and interviews with the teachers as research tools. For all these teachers, teaching values is a central goal of PE classes; for two of the teachers, it is the main goal. Because of this conviction, their pedagogies prioritize the teaching of moral values over others that can be taught in PE. A belief in the possibility of teaching values in the classroom is part of the habitus of the PE teacher; it can sometimes be characterized as an illusio. For these reasons, teachers can set unrealistic expectations, disregarding their own limitations as well as the conflicts and complexity involved in the construction of value systems.     

Patterns of Early‐Life Social and Environmental Exposures and Child Cognitive Development,Rhea Birth Cohort,Crete, Greece

Early‐life exposures are critical for later child cognitive development. McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) were used to assess cognitive development of 700 preschoolers (M_age = 4.2 years), derived from the “Rhea” birth cohort, in Greece. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied on prospectively collected exposure data. Six components were extracted; five of them were associated with child cognition. Higher parental social status, preschool attendance and less TV watching, nonsmoking during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and parental involvement in child life were protective factors of child cognition at 4 years. Increased child birth order was negatively associated with child cognition. Offspring's size at birth was not associated with any cognitive outcome. These findings reveal the importance of early‐life exposures to child cognitive development.     

Opening Doors: Teaching LGBTQ-themed Young Adult Literature for an Inclusive Curriculum

LGBTQ themes are often neglected in many schools' curriculum. Currently, an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum framework is not required in most school districts across the county. Therefore, it is important to understand how teachers regard LGBTQ issues; how they address the needs of students in the middle school and high school English classroom who identify on this spectrum or who come from LGBTQ families; and how they incorporate literature that may be considered “controversial” in their future school districts. In this study, English/Language Arts preservice teachers (PSTs) (certification 7–12) were invited to participate in a book club and self-select young adult (YA) literature centering on characters who identify on the LGBTQ spectrum. During two book club meetings, three themes emerged that embody how literature can become a mirror as well as a window for students and assist youth in identity formation and confirmation. Moreover, literature has the potential to empower readers to take action on controversial issues, especially when readers are in positions to make change (no matter how subtle). Although the data collected were from PSTs, our aim with this article is to expand these three themes as overarching messages for practicing educators today, urging the importance of a more inclusive curricula involving LGBTQ literature.     

Preschool teachers and classroom aides: Same context,similar perceptions of children's behaviors?

This study explored the correspondence and differences between school staff perceptions of preschool children's social skills and behavior problems. One hundred preschoolers were assessed by 14 pairs of teachers and classroom aides with the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales – 2^nd Edition (PKBS‐2 Portuguese version). Indexes of agreement and disagreement were calculated. Risk levels and item analyses of PKBS‐2 scores according to both informants' ratings were compared. A higher level of agreement was obtained for social skills scores than for behavior problems (mean correlation of .62). No statistically significant differences between informants were obtained for the risk levels, and item analyses revealed a similar pattern of behaviors that were most and least rated by both informants. Results indicate that the classroom aides' perspective on preschool assessment represents a reliable input, which justifies that they network with teachers in addressing preschoolers' social‐emotional and behavioral challenges.     

“Connect,” Log It,Track It,Go! Techne—Not Technology—and Embodiment to Achieve Phronesis in Exercise Promotion

Given the rise in obesity and the positive exercise effects in curbing obesity levels, exercise promoters are expected to use technological applications—social media and fitness applications—in their exercise motivational programs. The purpose of this article is to critique the use of social media and fitness apps as both ineffective and potentially harmful. An alternative approach is proposed where phronesis (practical wisdom) in exercise participation can be achieved via physical and cognitive mastery of the action for its own sake (real techne-art, embodiment). Emphasizing exercise outcomes (e.g., energy expenditure) captured by external devices distracts from embodied and phronetic action. Drawing on the philosophies of phronesis, techne, and embodiment, exercise promoters should emphasize embodied exercise experiences via mastery of action, social interactions, and connectedness to nature. They should target real action in real communities, and not emotionless and meaningless online forums about how to become the ultimate virtual fitness buff.