A career in professional services: accident,serendipity or something more?

As part of a larger study, professional staff from two universities, Australian and British, were asked how they entered into a higher education career and what factors kept them in that career. Many participants reported that they found themselves in professional services almost by accident, or by a fortunate combination of circumstances. However, in addition to the serendipitous recruitment reported in earlier studies, our analysis found a positive value associated with higher education that attracted people to seek out employment opportunities, and to remain in the sector. This suggests that recruitment is not as accidental or serendipitous as might first appear. We argue that while there are many reasons why our participants remained in higher education, the variety offered in day-to-day roles and responsibilities is a key factor in retaining professional staff. Our findings have implications for policy and practice, for both the recruitment and retention of talented professional staff.     

Reforming the Racial Curriculum: curriculum change in desegregated schools in South Africa

This article analyses curriculum changes that have accompanied the reform movement to desegregate private and religious schools in South Africa. In a context of racially segregated State schooling, the 'open' schools have admitted students of all races to what were previously white schools. An examination of the curriculum practices of these schools reveals different patterns in terms of the extent to which schools have modified their practices to acknowledge their black enrolments, and their different approaches to the political crisis in South Africa. The article suggests that the assimilationist practices of most of the open schools illustrate their limits as a reform movement; but it suggests also that they are the only schooling venture during this period that has engaged with issues of desegregation in South Africa in a sustained way.     

Reputation Enhancement and Involvement in Delinquency Among High School Students

The present research explored the relationship between high school students' self-reported delinquency and the importance of their social reputations. The prevalence of self-reported delinquency was investigated in a sample of 965 (467 males, 498 females) Years 8 to 12 students attending high schools in Brisbane and Perth, Australia. The results revealed that males are significantly more prone to all forms of delinquent behaviour than their female peers. Most forms of delinquency appeared to peak at Year 9, with the exception of drug use which increased with age. A cluster analysis was performed on the prevalence data and students were separated into two groups: students with high and low involvement in delinquency. The reputations of students with high and low delinquency involvement were investigated. Students identified as having low involvement in delinquency desired a more conforming reputation than those with high involvement. Females also desired a more conforming reputation than their male counterparts. In relation to year level, junior high school students were less conforming than senior high school students. Ways to address the powerful nature of adolescent reputations and the link between reputational status and involvement in delinquent activities are highlighted.     

校长怎样增强领导能力

校长怎样增强领导能力,以更好地履行他们多方面的职责?需关注八个方面的主题,即心中有学生、做有学问的领导者、办事合乎道德、把对教学的领导放在首位、实施有效的管理、构建互信关系、知道期待什么、构建和谐的学校-社区伙伴关系。     

Teachers' Work and Schooling in Bali

This study addresses educational reform in Indonesia with reference to one of the most important potential agents of change in any national system of schooling - its teachers. The empirical data on secondary teachers and trainee teachers used here are taken from a larger case study of the attitudes and opinions of stakeholders in the education system of North Bali. Secondary teachers in Bali, as elsewhere in Indonesia, are seriously underpaid, but not necessarily undervalued in the community. They take on other jobs to support themselves and their families, yet they do not lack commitment to the professional task of teaching. It is argued that financial pressure on teachers to find other sources of remuneration militates against their capacity to act as agents of change in the rapidly reforming Indonesian state. Furthermore, teaching is not often seen as a financially rewarding profession by a new generation of secondary-school graduates. The author recommends that teachers' salaries be raised and infrastructure support for schools increased.     

School effects on Chilean children’s achievement growth in language and mathematics: An accelerated growth curve model

This study investigates school effects on primary school students’ language and mathematics achievement trajectories in Chile, a context of particular interest given its large between-school variability in educational outcomes. The sample features an accelerated longitudinal design (3 time points, 4 cohorts) together spanning Grades 3 to 8 (n = 19,704 students in 156 schools). The magnitudes of school effects on students’ growth trajectories were found to be sizeable (generally larger than school effects in Western industrialised countries) and moderately consistent across school subjects. School composition effects on student achievement status were found for both school subjects. However, there was no evidence of composition effects on student achievement growth. The study provides new evidence on the size and nature of school effects in a developing country context based on state-of-the-art methods (i.e., accelerated longitudinal and growth curve models).     

The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment

The disproportionate discipline of African-American students has been extensively documented; yet the reasons for those disparities are less well understood. Drawing upon one year of middle-school disciplinary data for an urban school district, we explored three of the most commonly offered hypotheses for disproportionate discipline based on gender, race, and socioeconomic status. Racial and gender disparities in office referrals, suspensions, and expulsions were somewhat more robust than socioeconomic differences. Both racial and gender differences remained when controlling for socioeconomic status. Finally, although evidence emerged that boys engage more frequently in a broad range of disruptive behavior, there were no similar findings for race. Rather, there appeared to be a differential pattern of treatment, originating at the classroom level, wherein African-American students are referred to the office for infractions that are more subjective in interpretation. Implications for teacher training and structural reform are explored.     

Children's thinking about counterfactuals and future hypotheticals as possibilities

Two experiments explored whether children's correct answers to counterfactual and future hypothetical questions were based on an understanding of possibilities. Children played a game in which a toy mouse could run down either 1 of 2 slides. Children found it difficult to mark physically both possible outcomes, compared to reporting a single hypothetical future event, "What if next time he goes the other way ..." (Experiment 1: 3-4-year-olds and 4-5-year-olds), or a single counterfactual event, "What if he had gone the other way ...?" (Experiment 2: 3-4-year-olds and 5-6-year-olds). An open counterfactual question, "Could he have gone anywhere else?," which required thinking about the counterfactual as an alternative possibility, was also relatively difficult.     

How do socioeconomic attainment gaps in early mathematical ability arise?

Socioeconomic attainment gaps in mathematical ability are evident before children begin school, and widen over time. Little is known about why early attainment gaps emerge. Two cross-sectional correlational studies were conducted in 2018–2019 with socioeconomically diverse preschoolers, to explore four factors that might explain why attainment gaps arise: working memory, inhibitory control, verbal ability, and frequency of home mathematical activities (N = 304, 54% female; 84% White, 10% Asian, 1% black African, 1% Kurdish, 4% mixed ethnicity). Inhibitory control and verbal ability emerged as indirect factors in the relation between socioeconomic status and mathematical ability, but neither working memory nor home activities did. We discuss the implications this has for future research to understand, and work towards narrowing attainment gaps.     

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.