Race and sex: teachers' views on who gets ahead in schools?

The research reported here was part of a large study of the impact of age, disability, race and sex on the teaching profession in England. The basic question asked in this research was how do these factors interact with career aspirations and achievements of classteachers, promoted teachers and headteachers? There were three different data sources: a large postal survey drawn from diverse geographic regions across England with over 2000 respondents; face‐to‐face individual interviews with over 100 teachers in 18 case study schools from across all of the main regions of England; discussions with special interest groups of teachers. Not surprisingly, the answer to the above question was complex. Nonetheless, the paper's conclusion highlights some of the noteworthy themes across this broad sample of teachers from primary, secondary and special schools.

Les travaux de recherche décris dans cet article ont fait partie d'une large étude sur l'impact de l'age, des handicaps, de l'origine ethnique et du genre sur les professions de l'enseignement. L'une des questions abordées dans cette recherche était de savoir comment ces facteurs interagissaient avec les aspirations professionnelles et les carrières des enseignants, administratifs et chefs d'établissement. Trois principales sources d'information ont été utilisées: un sondage par courrier de plus de 2000 personnes, couvrant différentes régions géographiques de l'Angleterre; des entretiens individuels avec une centaine d'enseignants de 18 écoles cibles, reparties sur les principales régions de l'Angleterre; des discussions avec des groupes de travail d'enseignants. De manière non surprenante, la réponse à la question ci‐dessus s'est avérée complexe. Néanmoins, cet article met en évidence un ensemble de thèmes significatifs à travers ce large groupe d'enseignants issus du primaire, du secondaire et d'institutions spécialisées.

La investigación que se presenta aquí formó parte de un largo estudio sobre el impacto que tenía la edad, discapacidad, diferencias de etnia y género en la profesión de maestro en Inglaterra. Una de las principales cuestiones a contestar en la presente investigación fue cómo estos factores interactúan en las aspiraciones profesionales de maestros, jefes del departamento y directores, se presentan en este artículo. Hubo tres principales fuentes de datos. Estas incluían: una amplia encuesta por correo la cual tuvo en cuenta diversas regiones de la geografía de Inglaterra, con cerca de unas 2000 personas encuestadas; entrevistas individuales cara a cara a unos 100 maestros en 18 estudios de casos de escuelas a través de todas las principales regiones de Inglaterra; y discusiones con grupos interesantes de maestros. No nos debe sorprender que las respuestas a las preguntas comentadas anteriormente fueran complejas de resolver. De todas formas las conclusiones del artículo dan luz a algunos de los temas significativos a través de la amplia muestra de maestros de escuelas de primaria, secundaria y escuelas especiales.

Die hier präsentierte Forschungsarbeit war Teil einer umfassenden Studie, die sich mit der Auswirkung von Alter, Behinderung, ethnischer Herkunft und Geschlecht auf den Lehrberuf in England auseinandersetzt. Die wesentliche Frage, die in dieser Forschungsarbeit gestellt wurde, lautete wie folgt: wie wirken sich genannte Faktoren auf Karriereaspirationen und Leistungen von Klassenlehrern, beförderten Lehrern und Schulleitern aus? Die Daten wurden aus drei Hauptquellen bezogen; dazu gehören: eine umfassende, geographisch breitgefächerte Postumfrage in England, auf die über 2000 Befragte antworteten; persönliche Gespräche mit über 100 Lehrern aus 18 zu Fallstudien herangezogenen Schulen in den Haupregionen Englands; und Diskussionen mit Lehrern, die bestimmte Interessengruppen vertreten. Die Antwort zu der oben genannten Frage war erwartungsgemäss komplex. Nichtsdestoweniger werden in dieser Arbeit einige der Themen hervorgehoben, die Lehrer aus dem Primär‐, Sekundär‐ und Sonderschulbereich für besonders erwähnenswert hielten.     

The Experiences of Foundation Phase Teachers Regarding Reading Literacy Interventions at an Underperforming School in Gauteng Province

South Africa’s education system has been characterized by various curriculum changes since 1997 given that basic education is a priority of this government and policies have specifically been aimed at improving the overall standard of education in the country. Despite these curriculum changes, the findings of tests such as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) of 2006 revealed that South African learners had obtained the lowest overall reading literacy average out of 45 participating educational systems and the South African Consortium for Measuring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) highlighted that the majority of children in South Africa’s primary schools are not even reading at the minimal required level. In view of the publicised results of PIRLS 2006 and SAQMEQ 2008, several reading literacy interventions, known as the Foundations for Learning (FFL), Annual National Assessments (ANA) and Gauteng Province Literacy and Mathematics Strategy (GPLMS) have been launched in the past few years to improve literacy and numeracy results in the country. Notwithstanding, the increasing prevalence of low reading literacy results in South Africa raised questions about the effectiveness of interventions intended to improve reading results (in: GDE, Gauteng Primary Literacy Strategy, 2010–2014, Government Printer, Pretoria, 2010). Given the background of this study, the primary aim was to establish the essence of the participant FP teachers’ lived experiences regarding the implementation of interventions for reading literacy such as FFL, ANA and GPLMS in order to theorise about the effectiveness of these interventions. The secondary purpose was to add to the body of knowledge concerning FFL, ANA and GPLMS implemented as interventions to improve reading literacy results in South Africa. To achieve these purposes, a phenomenological case study was conducted at one of the 832 identified underperforming schools in Gauteng with eleven Foundation Phase teachers. Three methods were used to collect data namely focus group interviews, non face to face interviews and artefacts. The focus group interviews were held in grade context whilst interview forms were given to each of the eleven participants and they were requested to complete it comprehensively in the absence of the researcher. Data from all interviews were corroborated through selected artefacts which were mentioned during the interviews or discovered by the researcher throughout the study. The key findings of this study show that the participants perceived FFL, ANA and GPLMS as mandatory interventions for reading literacy that are unwanted and repetitious. Most importantly the participants deemed ANA as unreliable and unfair whilst FFL and GPLMS were deemed unsuitable for the diverse needs of the learners at this school. In view of the findings, this study concluded that there is limited value in providing mandatory interventions to teachers with the intent of improving the reading literacy results of learners with diverse needs that are contextually bound.     

“Are you really ready to change?” An actor-oriented perspective on a farmers training setting in Madagascar

Far from following a linear process from its conception to its implementation, an educational design often involves discrepancies between what its promoters intended and what the participants actually do. In this paper, drawing from a sociocultural perspective to learning, we focus our attention precisely on some of the discrepancies observed during the implementation of a training program. We consider these discrepancies not as mistakes or misunderstandings, but rather as indicators of the communicative dimension of any intervention and as “windows” on the processes of change and on learning. The program we have studied here was set up in Madagascar and was sustained by a Swiss cooperation agency addressed to farmers in the field of forestry. In this research, we adopted an actor-oriented perspective in order to understand the promoters’ and the beneficiaries’ interpretation of the design and the way they developed innovative strategies to resolve the difficulties they faced. We chose some “critical incidents” from the data gathered through ethnographical research and show how the whole process of the conception and the implementation of the program was deeply affected by both the power dynamic embedded in the history of the relationship between the Swiss and the Malagasy groups and by their own cultural and institutional constraints. In conclusion, we discuss the significance of an actor-oriented perspective that contributes to a better understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of learning and allows us to relate the here and now micro-phenomena to the larger anthropological, social, and political scenery.     

Mindset × Context: Schools,Classrooms, and the Unequal Translation of Expectations into Math Achievement

When do adolescents' dreams of promising journeys through high school translate into academic success? This monograph reports the results of a collaborative effort among sociologists and psychologists to systematically examine the role of schools and classrooms in disrupting or facilitating the link between adolescents' expectations for success in math and their subsequent progress in the early high school math curriculum. Our primary focus was on gendered patterns of socioeconomic inequality in math and how they are tethered to the school's peer culture and to students' perceptions of gender stereotyping in the classroom. To do this, this monograph advances Mindset × Context Theory. This orients research on educational equity to the reciprocal influence between students' psychological motivations and their school-based opportunities to enact those motivations. Mindset × Context Theory predicts that a student's mindset will be more strongly linked to developmental outcomes among groups of students who are at risk for poor outcomes, but only in a school or classroom context where there is sufficient need and support for the mindset. Our application of this theory centers on expectations for success in high school math as a foundational belief for students' math progress early in high school. We examine how this mindset varies across interpersonal and cultural dynamics in schools and classrooms. Following this perspective, we ask:

• 1. Which gender and socioeconomic identity groups showed the weakest or strongest links between expectations for success in math and progress through the math curriculum?
• 2. How did the school's peer culture shape the links between student expectations for success in math and math progress across gender and socioeconomic identity groups?
• 3. How did perceptions of classroom gender stereotyping shape the links between student expectations for success in math and math progress across gender and socioeconomic identity groups?

We used nationally representative data from about 10,000 U.S. public school 9th graders in the National Study of Learning Mindsets (NSLM) collected in 2015–2016—the most recent, national, longitudinal study of adolescents' mindsets in U.S. public schools. The sample was representative with respect to a large number of observable characteristics, such as gender, race, ethnicity, English Language Learners (ELLs), free or reduced price lunch, poverty, food stamps, neighborhood income and labor market participation, and school curricular opportunities. This allowed for generalization to the U.S. public school population and for the systematic investigation of school- and classroom-level contextual factors. The NSLM's complete sampling of students within schools also allowed for a comparison of students from different gender and socioeconomic groups with the same expectations in the same educational contexts. To analyze these data, we used the Bayesian Causal Forest (BCF) algorithm, a best-in-class machine-learning method for discovering complex, replicable interaction effects. Chapter IV examined the interplay of expectations, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES; operationalized with maternal educational attainment). Adolescents' expectations for success in math were meaningful predictors of their early math progress, even when controlling for other psychological factors, prior achievement in math, and racial and ethnic identities. Boys from low-SES families were the most vulnerable identity group. They were over three times more likely to not make adequate progress in math from 9th to 10th grade relative to girls from high-SES families. Boys from low-SES families also benefited the most from their expectations for success in math. Overall, these results were consistent with Mindset × Context Theory's predictions. Chapters V and VI examined the moderating role of school-level and classroom-level factors in the patterns reported in Chapter IV. Expectations were least predictive of math progress in the highest-achieving schools and schools with the most academically oriented peer norms, that is, schools with the most formal and informal resources. School resources appeared to compensate for lower levels of expectations. Conversely, expectations most strongly predicted math progress in the low/medium-achieving schools with less academically oriented peers, especially for boys from low-SES families. This chapter aligns with aspects of Mindset × Context Theory. A context that was not already optimally supporting student success was where outcomes for vulnerable students depended the most on student expectations. Finally, perceptions of classroom stereotyping mattered. Perceptions of gender stereotyping predicted less progress in math, but expectations for success in math more strongly predicted progress in classrooms with high perceived stereotyping. Gender stereotyping interactions emerged for all sociodemographic groups except for boys from high-SES families. The findings across these three analytical chapters demonstrate the value of integrating psychological and sociological perspectives to capture multiple levels of schooling. It also drew on the contextual variability afforded by representative sampling and explored the interplay of lab-tested psychological processes (expectations) with field-developed levers of policy intervention (school contexts). This monograph also leverages developmental and ecological insights to identify which groups of students might profit from different efforts to improve educational equity, such as interventions to increase expectations for success in math, or school programs that improve the school or classroom cultures.