Challenging Gender Stereotypes: Resistance and Exclusion

The likelihood of resisting gender‐stereotypic peer group norms, along with expectations about personal resistance, was investigated in 9‐ to 10‐year‐olds and 13‐ to 14‐year‐olds (N = 292). Participants were told about a stereotype conforming group (boys playing football; girls doing ballet) and a stereotype nonconforming group (boys doing ballet; girls playing football). Contrary to expectations from gender‐stereotyping research, participants stated that they would personally resist gender‐stereotypic norms, and more so than they would expect their peers to resist. However, expecting peers to resist declined with age. Participants expected that exclusion from the group was a consequence for challenging the peer group, and understood the asymmetrical status of gender stereotypes with an expectation that it would be more difficult for boys to challenge stereotypes than for girls.     

“Free yourself,sister!”: teacher identity,subjection, and the psyche

Teachers are caught in a tug of war between what they are supposed to be and who they are trying to become. The teaching subject, striving to be recognisable, is socially constructed and discursively constituted through ongoing relations with power – an identity essentially determined in advance. What is it to live – to become, as teacher – in this space? It is in this theoretical context in which this research is situated; acknowledging the discursive construction of the teaching subject in order to consider who teachers are, who they are allowed to be, and who they are allowed to become. Drawing on an empirical example, I will explore the post-structural theories of subjection and psychoanalytic perspectives of the psyche in order to illustrate and conceptualise the struggle in being and becoming a teacher.     

The Influences of Socioscientific Issues on General Science Teaching Self-Efficacy

Research in Science Education - Two common reasons elementary preservice teachers have low self-efficacy with science teaching is their lack of content knowledge and past negative experiences with...     

Pilot study of online training modules to improve speech-language pathology students’ explicit syntax knowledge

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) exhibit weaknesses in the syntactic aspects of language that affect their spoken language (i.e., speaking and listening) and written language (i.e., reading and writing). Speech-language pathologists (SLP) who work with children with DLD are the team member with the greatest expertise in syntax. However, emerging data suggest that speech-language pathology (SLP) students and SLPs have limitations in their explicit syntax knowledge that may affect how they assess and treat the language and literacy knowledge and skills of children with DLD. Additionally, there is a lack of data on the outcomes of professional development specific to syntax. This paper reports on the effects of self-paced, online learning modules on SLP graduate students’ explicit syntax knowledge. Thirty-six SLP graduate students completed online syntax learning modules that taught four pairs of syntactic structures. SLP graduate students experienced a treatment effect from two of the four online training modules. Treatment effects seemed to be influenced by the syntactic skill being treated, by prior knowledge of that particular syntactic structure, and by other environmental factors, including training program. Although future studies should explore these factors further, the outcomes of this pilot study are the first to report on a way to improve SLP graduate students’, and potentially SLPs’, explicit syntax knowledge.

     

A proficiency model for pre-service physics teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)—What constitutes high-level PCK?

This study identifies proficiency levels in pre-service physics teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and reveals how teacher education can promote transitions into higher proficiency. Teacher education plays a fundamental role in supporting pre-service teachers' PCK development. Proficiency levels are a powerful source when evaluating this PCK development because they characterize what learners are likely to be able to know on a specific level. Previous research has presented a model of proficiency levels in pre-service physics teachers' PCK; however, evidence for the model's validity is still lacking. According to the Refined Consensus Model of PCK, factors such as teachers' content knowledge (CK), their teaching experience, and their beliefs about teaching and learning science promote PCK development. Thus, understanding how and when pre-service physics teachers' CK, teaching experience, and beliefs contribute to their proficiency can bring insights into how teacher education can promote PCK development. To address this issue, N = 427 observations of pre-service physics teachers were analyzed. Utilizing the scale anchoring procedure, four different proficiency levels in pre-service physics teachers' PCK were identified. Analyzing these proficiency levels showed that lower levels can be characterized as remembering content-unspecific knowledge, whereas higher levels encompass content-specific strategies to structure and elaborate lessons. Additionally, logistic regression models revealed that pre-service physics teachers' CK is crucial for an increase in PCK proficiency. However, transitions into higher levels of PCK additionally require teaching experience and adequate beliefs about teaching and learning. Thus, our proficiency levels can be used to bring insights into how proficiency in PCK can be supported during teacher education. For example, teacher education should provide courses focusing on the science curriculum and the assessment of student learning to promote pre-service physics teachers' progression in PCK.     

‘Tracksuit Traitors’: Eastern German Top Athletes on the Run

In the time between its founding and the fall of the wall in November 1989, more than three million people left the German Democratic Republic, many of them illegally and under dangerous circumstances. The party leadership perceived this mass exodus of its citizens as one of the major threats for the real socialist regime.1^?1. Bispinck Bispinck, Henrick. “Republikflucht. Flucht und Ausreise als Problem der DDR-Führung.” Vor dem Mauerbau. Politik und Gesellschaft der DDR in den Fünfziger Jahren, edited by MichaelSchwartz and Hermann Wentker, 285–309. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2003. [Google Scholar], “Republikflucht.”‘Republikflucht’, as this move from East to West was called by the party leadership, was the reason for the two most important hiatuses in Eastern German history: the first result was that the SED leadership built the wall in August 1961. Many years later, in the fall of 1989, the situation culminated, when a flood of desperate refugees tried to escape to the Federal Republic of Germany via Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, thus effectively hurrying along the regime's demise. The world of sports, too, was considerably affected by this phenomenon. The following essay shall offer a short historical summary of the different reasons and routes Eastern German top athletes chose for their escape. Examples from various decades show that in spite of individual circumstances certain similarities in pattern can be made out, especially in respect to the way the government dealt with these cases of ‘treason’.     

Opinion Versus Knowledge: The Influence of Testimony Format on Children’s Judgments in Morally Relevant Contexts

Research Findings: To test children’s use of testimony of others, 3 – 9 years (N = 227) made judgments about a potential peer transgression in which the intentions of the protagonist were ambiguous, after hearing two different forms of testimony. The 2 forms of testimony were (a) opposing opinion-based testimony from an adult authority versus a peer consensus group and (b) knowledge-based testimony (eyewitness testimony) that was counter to the participants’ initial judgments. Findings revealed that when testimony was presented in an opinion-based format, children were likely to side with the opinion that reflected their own interpretation of the peer encounter, regardless of whether the opinion came from a peer consensus or an adult authority. However, when knowledge-based testimony was introduced in support of the opposite of children’s initial interpretation of the ambiguous peer encounter, children most often changed their initial judgment to align with the new testimony. That is, children used knowledge-based testimony but not opinion-based testimony to evaluate a potential transgression. Practice or Policy: These findings demonstrate that the way in which testimony is delivered to children has a direct influence on their decision making about peer interactions and has relevance for teacher–student discourse in the classroom.