Teacher capabilities in a multicultural educational environment: an analysis of the impact of a professional development project

With more programmes being taught through English in non-Anglophone contexts, higher education lecturers are faced with new challenges. This article briefly presents a professional development initiative carried out at departmental level as an intervention for all English Medium Instruction lecturers. In order to assess the effect of such an intervention, a mix of different data sets are used, moving from self-assessment by participants to observations of individual teaching practices in the classrooms. It is shown how corroboration of surveys and observation reports in an explicit feedback template can be used to evidence the value of the intervention in context.     

Prisoners’ academic motivation,viewed from the perspective of self-determination theory: Evidence from a population of Norwegian prisoners

International Review of Education - The study presented in this article explores prisoners’ academic motivation structure from the theoretical perspective of self-determination theory, using...     

The impact of physical growth and relative age effect on assessment in physical education

Physical education (PE) is perhaps the school subject most likely to produce relative age effects (RAE). Like in sports, physical maturity gives students an advantage in PE, which might well be mistaken for superior ability. The aim of the present study is to investigate the extent to which physical growth, measured as height, and RAE reflect the assessment in Norwegian PE. Furthermore, we wanted to examine whether there is any gender differences in the assessment in PE as a function of physical growth and RAE. The participants (n?=?2978) were pupils in the last three years of secondary school (13–16 years old). A custom-made questionnaire was designed to collect the necessary data. The correlations between height and mark in PE for boys in 8th, 9th, and 10th grades are respectively r?=?0.14, r?=?0.32, and r?=?0.29. For girls, the correlations are r?=?0.11, r?=?0.33, and r?=?0.21. All correlations are significant (p?<?.05). The number of pupils achieving top marks was 114 in the first half of the year, whereas it was 65 in the second half of the year. The present study showed that physical growth has an impact on the pupils’ PE attainment. The physical growth is of course also mediated by the pupils’ age. RAEs were found in PE attainments also in the Norwegian school system for both genders, despite all the intentions expressed in the PE curriculum.     

ADHD medication and social self-understanding

This paper addresses some of the contradictions, dilemmas, and struggles in a Danish primary school practice involved in medicating children diagnosed with ADHD. It draws on a social practice research study of a 7-year-old boy diagnosed with ADHD, who was medicated against his will. It focuses on his struggles when being medicated, and particularly on meaning making processes and changes in social self-understandings in the first grade class, 1B, generated among students, teachers, and parents. The paper is an analysis of moments and movements in Dennis’ social self-understanding generated as part of a social practice research project combining a variety of methods, ranging from collective biography inspired group work and qualitative interviews with teachers and students, photo-based interviews, and participant observation in the school. The study has a double aim of generating theory regarding social self-understanding and ADHD medication, and analyzing concrete contradictions, dilemmas, and action possibilities in a primary school, enabling new “practice recognitions” that (at least partly) move beyond practices that generate marginalized social self-understandings.     

Philosophy,education, and the explosion of knowledge

In science, and in the teaching of science, knowinghow is as important as knowingthat. The value of theoretical knowledge is limited, especially so in view of the rapid increase in available information. Methodological analysis of concrete problems should play a major role in teaching. Also, students should learn to contextualize problems in disciplines other than their major area of interest. Generalists are badly needed for this, in teaching and in research. However, current forms of interdisciplinary integration must be de-emphasized.     

Curriculum Alignment with a Mission of Social Change in Higher Education

Institutions of higher education frequently acknowledge their role in contributing to the common good through their mission statements. The current literature suggests that in order to be effective mission statements must be clearly articulated and reflected in all the activities of the institution including its curriculum. Faculty members at Walden University developed a Curriculum Guide for Social Change that could serve as a tool for reviewing current course offerings and developing new courses to reflect its mission of “creating positive social change.” Those involved in piloting the Guide report on the process in this article. The general consensus is that it was time-consuming and frequently subjective; but the Guide gave substance to the institution’s mission, opening the way for its fuller implementation.     

Getting Comfortable with Discomfort: Preparing Counselor Trainees to Broach Racial,Ethnic, and Cultural Factors with Clients during Counseling

Counselors’ considerations of racial and cultural factors in the lives and experiences of clients enhances counseling outcomes. Acknowledgement of cultural factors enhances counselor credibility, client satisfaction, and the depth of client disclosure. This article opens with an overview of the Continuum of Broaching Behavior (Day-Vines et al. 2007), continues with a case illustration that enumerates categories along the continuum, provides empirical support for the continuum, and closes with a set of instructional strategies for counselor educators to infuse within a multicultural counseling course.     

Teachers’ assessment experiences and perceptions in the practical-aesthetic subjects

A challenge for the practical-aesthetic subjects is the perception that they are less important than theoretical knowledge subjects. These subjects are among the non-core subjects receiving highest grades in Norwegian lower secondary schools, but also represent the highest number of complaints about grading. This study investigates teachers’ experience and perceptions of assessment in the practical-aesthetic subjects, through the response to an open-ended questionnaire from 28 teachers, and individual semi-structured interviews with four of these teachers. Results suggest that teachers of the practical-aesthetic subjects promote low status for these subjects, through their teaching and assessment practice.