Developing teacher‐student relationships through out of class communication

This study investigated student perceptions of control, trust, and intimacy as dimensions of teacher‐student relationships, and. the correlation between these relational variables and reports of learning. Control, trust, and intimacy are viewed as core dimensions of interpersonal relationships, and it is hypothesized that students who engage in out of class communication have relationships that are more interpersonal in nature than students who do not engage in out of class communication with teachers. This hypothesis was supported. Additionally, students who perceived their teachers as exhibiting higher levels of shared control, trust, and intimacy reported greater learning.     

‘I Wish the School Had a Better Understanding of the Diagnosis’: parent perspectives on educational needs of students with sex chromosome aneuploidies

Students with sex chromosome aneuploidies (SCAs) are at increased risk for learning disabilities and often require individualized supports in the school setting. Parents of students with rare disorders such as SCAs possess a unique understanding of their child’s educational experiences and play a crucial role in the development of successful school support plans. This international survey study aimed to inductively capture parent perspectives on educational needs and supports for students with SCAs. Parents of youth with SCAs ages 5-21 years (n = 305) provided free-text responses to open-ended questions about their child’s education. Qualitative content analysis using a bioecological systems framework resulted in three overarching themes. Overall, parents identified multiple factors related to the SCA diagnosis that act as barriers to learning, a strong need for school-based social and emotional supports, and elusive or incomplete educational support plans. Based on these findings, we recommend developing robust family-school partnerships, increased collaboration between the school and the child’s medical team, and acknowledgement of the significant role the genetic condition plays in the educational experiences of students with SCAs. Specific suggestions for school support plans for students with SCAs are explored, such as providing school-based behavioral health supports and explicit teaching of executive function strategies.     

Counselor Trainees’ Experiences in Triadic Supervision: A Qualitative Exploration of Transcendent Themes

Triadic supervision has been considered a credible and effective form of clinical supervision within counselor education programs since being included in the 2001 standards for the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP). A phenomenological study was conducted to examine the experiences of masters-level counselor trainees in practicum with triadic supervision. Several transcendent themes emerged, namely: Initial Apprehensions, Shared Developmental Process, Vicarious Learning, Multiple Perspectives, and Safety through Trust and Relationship. The results of this study are discussed as they impact the field of counselor education and supervision.     

Using Technology-Enhanced Inquiry-Based Instruction to Foster the Development of Elementary Students’ Views on the Nature of Science

The Next Generation Science Standards support understanding of the nature of science as it is practiced and experienced in the real world through interconnected concepts to be imbedded within scientific practices and crosscutting concepts. This study explored how fourth and fifth grade elementary students’ views of nature of science change when they engage in a technology-enhanced, scientific inquiry-oriented curriculum that takes place across formal and informal settings. Results suggest that student engagement in technology-enhanced inquiry activities that occur in informal and formal settings when supported through explicit instruction focused on metacognitive and social knowledge construction can improve elementary students’ understanding of nature of science.

     

《暮色》:走进斯蒂芬妮·梅尔的吸血鬼世界

如果不是因为这部电影,Grace根本不知道暮光之城这套书,更不会知道原来它在美国已经热卖了好几年。只看情节,似乎看不出这个吸血鬼故事有什么特别,但能在这个吸血鬼小说、电影和电视剧泛滥的年代打出名堂,肯定有其过人之处。如果想知道《暮色》讲什么但又懒得看小说,这部电影是个不错的选择。再透露一个消息:《暮色》原定今年12月上映,但由于《哈利·波特与混血王子》的上映日期由原来的11月推迟到明年7月,于是制作《暮色》的电影公司决定填补这个空挡。如果你对小说感兴趣,还可以翻到本期的美文共享栏目读一读节选,说不定你也会喜欢上它哦。     

Why not Intercultural Education?

Now more than ever teachers and those in teacher training positions are being confronted with the prevalence of multicultural and multilingual classroom environments. Along with this presence, they also face international and national policies which call for effective and successful strategy building for coping with diverse settings. This appeal often manifests with an inability on the teacher＇s part to effectively facilitate these multicultural classrooms, as well as an inability on the students＇ part to interact and finally contribute to a larger national and global goal of intercultural cooperation. A growing body of research suggests that as those in the field of teaching and teacher education seek to improve classroom techniques, curricula, and teaching practice in the area of diversity they continue to face disparaging and almost disillusioning results. What were traditionally seen as venues in dealing with issues in multiculturalism and diversity through multicultural education have been left unanswered？ The purpose of this article thus seeks to explore the pedagogical concept of intercultural education as a way to suggest discourse of dealing with the challenges to diversity in the classroom.     

Intelligent design: student perceptions of teaching and learning in large social work classes

Research into the effects of large classes demonstrates that students are disadvantaged in terms of higher order learning because interactions between teachers and students occur at lower cognitive levels. This has significance for social work education, with its emphasis on the development of critical thinking and problem solving, both higher order cognitive skills. This paper reports on quantitative and qualitative research that explored social work students’ perceptions of different teaching and learning strategies in a large mental health course designed with reference to principles of student‐centred learning and constructive alignment. Findings revealed that well‐integrated design, relevance to the real world and teacher enthusiasm were seen as most useful by students, rather than particular learning strategies per se. Higher satisfaction ratings and grades were also associated with this student‐centred course compared with an earlier traditional lecture‐style course. The paper concludes that design based on the interplay between diverse learning activities, including lecture input, strengthened the student‐centred orientation of learning and recommends further research that compares learning outcomes associated with these contrasting approaches to professional education.     

Embodied encounters with more-than-human nature in health and physical education

ABSTRACT

Despite the importance of interactions with natural environments for personal and social well-being, there is only limited evidence of the relationship between the environment and health as an idea or area of study in school education in Australia. Logically, the place for such a study, at least in Australia, would be within the Health & Physical Education (HPE) key learning area. However, in HPE, alternative ways of considering health beyond the dominant ‘healthism’ discourses which privilege physical activity, fitness, food and nutrition struggle for any kind of existence. Gruenewald (2004. A Foucauldian analysis of environmental education: Toward the socioecological challenge of the earth charter. Curriculum Inquiry, 34(1), 71–107) suggests looking to the margins of a field to see what knowledge is silenced or subjugated in order to open up new conditions of possibility. This challenged us to look beyond taken for granted ways of thinking about health to identify other resources, perhaps unrecognised as yet, that teachers might draw on to constitute their knowledge of health. To do this, we look to interview data collected when teachers were asked to talk about their personal experiences of the relationship between the environment and health. The analysis of the interviews demonstrated how the teachers conceptualised the relationship between the environment and health by drawing on embodied experiences and affective encounters with more-than-human nature. By theorising these encounters through a post-human, new-materialist lens, we demonstrate how their corporeal knowledge, developed through embodied experiences, has the potential to assist teachers in formulating less institutionalised health understandings. We argue that these encounters with more-than-human nature can serve as alternatives to those dominant healthism discourses that invoke problematic risk, fear and crisis responses.     

The Power of Publication: A Journey Into Authorship by One Child With Learning Disabilities

This article describes the journey of Daniel, a child with learning difficulties, into authorship through one-to-one tutoring. It discusses the powerful and positive influence the introduction of book making and publication had on Daniel's enthusiasm for writing and writing fluency. All this is set within a discussion of recent work on writing process teaching.