Multicultural Education From a Pedagogical Perspective: A Response to Radical Critiques

This paper critically reviews radical critiques of multicultural education from a pedagogical perspective. Goals for the paper are: to reveal agreement between radical and multicultural discourse about transformative pedagogy, exemplify a body of literature about pedagogical struggles not recognized by radical critics, and encourage interchange between these groups in regard to critical multicultural education.The authors are interested in transformative, multicultural pedagogy, which is associated with critical multicultural education. They seek to know the extent to which transformative multicultural pedagogy is addressed within radical critiques of multicultural education. They question the extent to which voices of teachers and students engaged in real transformative pedagogy are acknowledged by radical critics.Ideological agreement is found between radical critics and multicultural educators in regard to transformative pedagogy. However, radical critics do not acknowledge this agreement, or perceive multicultural education as transformative. In response, the authors reference a growing body of literature that portrays real, transformative, multicultural pedagogy in action in school and university classrooms. They encourage radical critics to read this literature and consider alliances between radical and multicultural theory and practice.     

The effect of task parameters in diagnostic reading groups

This study compared the performance of normal, primary, and secondary reading groups on intersensory and intrasensory tasks requiring paired and serial recall. Auditory and visual stimulus pairs composed of digits from 1 to 9 were presented using a Bell and Howell Language Master. Eight experimental tasks (four intersensory and four intrasensory) that required paired and serial verbal recall with an alteration of the first recalled modality (auditory or visual) were used. Ten trials of each of the eight experimental conditions were used with three pairs of stimuli presented at 2-second intervals. Three types of recall errors were scored for each task: gross (omission or substitution of digits), order (digit out of sequence), and interchange (inversion of digits). A multivariate analysis of variance was carried out for the reading groups × tasks × error types. The level of recall errors on bisensory tasks (auditory and visual) was related to the reading diagnostic groups. All readers exhibit similar patterns in the processing of bisensory information; however, unique differences were found among normal, primary, and secondary readers. A summary profile is given of the effects of task parameters among the groups (normal, primary, and secondary readers) in the processing of bisensory tasks.     

Anticipation or Trepidation? Teachers’ Views on the Literacy Hour

This paper considers the criticisms made in the press of the National Literacy Strategy prior to its implementation and compares these to comments made by teachers in a questionnaire distributed in the summer term of 1998. These showed that teachers had both positive and negative views about the NLS, that these views were, on the whole, more positive than we had expected and did not necessarily reflect views as put forward in the press.     

The Personal Organization of Electronic Mail Messages in a Business Environment: An Exploratory Study

In the business world, electronic mail (e-mail) has emerged as a widely used communication tool for transmitting knowledge between managers. As a result, these messages will require organization should future access to this trapped knowledge be expected and desired. A manager's e-mail classification scheme should be logically constructed in anticipation of future need, but future need may be driven by the information needs of other people within the organization such as superiors or subordinates. This researcher explored the nature of e-mail classification and documented the emergence of a high utility, multi-stage, classification process. The resulting framework consists of four categories that help explain how managers classify business-related e-mail. The first category reflects the immediate needs of the manager and the behavior of establishing relationships between messages. The second category reflects the manager's use of the in-box as a crude task-manager. The third category aligns with the manager's interest in scanning the environment. The fourth category reflects the managers perceived future need for the captured knowledge. The subjects rejected automatic classification and preferred an enumerative scheme. The researcher illustrates how the results of this study align with Marco and Navarro's three stage cognitive process that leads to stored knowledge (On some contributions of the cognitive sciences and epistemology to a theory of classification, Knowledge Organization, 20(3), 126–132). The cognitive processes that underlie classification are an essential component in understanding knowledge organization and have remained in focus during this study.     

Responding Creatively to Challenges in Teacher Education: four women teacher educators tell their stories

This paper reports on a study that has mapped the stories of a group of women teacher educators. While the focus is on the period of change during the last 10 years from primarily teachers’ colleges to university‐based teacher education, the broader context of the individual women's lives is explored as well. The stories are mapped against each other and against relevant literature. In this way the study considers the challenge of change on the experiences of these women teacher educators. This study has been informed by feminist theory and has been constructed within a framework which is both narrative and collaborative. As Acker notes ‘one advantage of narrative is that history makes itself evident in the world of its actors’. In this way the intersections of the personal histories and biographies of the teacher educators within the social context in which they work are examined. These women teacher educators’ stories demonstrate similarities and differences in actions and reactions to the challenges they have faced in the last decade in teacher education. The similarities and differences are due to individual histories, career experiences and the character of the institutions in which they live their professional lives. In presenting this paper, the key focus is on reporting how the forces inherent in the changing nature of the educational environment have impacted on these teacher educators in such a way as to present challenges for each in the way they have developed in their profession as teacher educators.     

Teaching metatheory through research application and design

We present an engaging and practical exercise in which graduate students grapple with metatheoretical perspectives often presented in their introduction to graduate studies or communication theory courses. To expand their understanding of and engagement with the major elements of the paradigms central to our field, students work in groups to apply and compare various metatheoretical assumptions to a specific research context. The goal of this activity is to strengthen students’ grasp and understanding of these perspectives specifically in the role they hold in guiding one's research study and design. We provide various examples and directions to aid instructors in the presentation of this exercise, as such topics are often challenging from a pedagogical standpoint.

Courses: Communication Theory, Introduction to Graduate Studies.

Objectives: To aid students in grasping, understanding, and comparing the major elements of metatheoretical perspectives and assumptions through application to specific research contexts.     

Is Your College Really Ready for a Crisis?

Community colleges are responsible not only for the education but also for the safety and welfare of their students. That responsibility includes keeping students free from physical and psychological harm from the moment they enter the campus. In recent years, it has become distressingly apparent that colleges are not well prepared for this challenge. While most schools across the United States have an emergency management plan, many of these plans are not comprehensive and do not meet federal guidelines.     

Developing Teachers' Leadership Knowledge: Pillars for the “New Reform”

This work describes how teacher education programs can inform teachers' knowledge and practice of leadership. We introduce a leadership typology to illustrate how teachers can lead organizational reform for pedagogical excellence and socially just practices. The model provides teacher educators ways to identify and resolve conflicts generated by imparting innovative pedagogies to teachers who in turn use them in antiquated and inequitable school environments. The model can also be used to develop teachers' professional knowledge of the contexts that mitigate or marginalize their leadership potential. Several examples from current teaching practices in teacher education are used to illustrate how teachers develop leadership knowledge.     

Factors influencing academic success and retention following a 1st-year post-secondary success course

Research has found that grades are the most valid instruments for predicting educational success. Why grades have better predictive validity than, for example, standardized tests is not yet fully understood. One possible explanation is that grades reflect not only subject-specific knowledge and skills but also individual differences in other aspects. The purpose was to investigate the relative importance of knowledge and skills and other aspects encapsulated in grades for the predictive validity of compulsory school grades for educational success in upper secondary school. Structural equation modelling was used. Participants were 9th-grade students from 3 birth cohorts, each comprising full populations of approximately 100,000 students. The results showed that the subject-specific factors and an additional common grade factor contributed to the predictive validity. Effects of gender and parents' education were found in the common grade factor, with girls and students with a lower educational background being advantaged.