Settler grammars and the Australian professional standards for teachers

In 2011, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership introduced new Professional Standards for Teachers, which require that graduate teachers possess knowledge and understanding of Indigenous students and cultures. The authors conducted interviews with 12 non-Indigenous teacher educators at one Australian university in order to understand how these Standards are interpreted and implemented. We adopt Calderon’s framework of settler grammars to interpret the dialectic of presence and absence that teacher educators in our study describe. Extending this frame to an analysis of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, we find that settler grammars function to simultaneously erase Indigenous claims to sovereignty and epistemological equality, whilst promoting a representation of Indigenous people that asserts the primacy of the settler colonial state.     

Observed peer victimization during early elementary school: continuity, growth, and relation to risk for child antisocial and depressive behavior

The rate at which 266 boys and girls ages 5 to 7 years old were victimized by peers was observed on multiple occasions in kindergarten and first grade. Individual differences in victimization were observed at kindergarten entry and in growth over the subsequent 2 years. Victimization increased for some children but decreased for others. Growth in victimization was reciprocally related to growth in teacher-reported antisocial and depressive behavior for boys. For girls, kindergarten victimization was related to growth in parent-reported antisocial behavior, teacher-reported depressive behavior to growth in victimization, and growth in victimization to parent-reported depression. At a short-term group level, antisocial behavior had a lagged suppressive effect on victimization for boys but a facilitating effect for girls.     

Creativity, integrativism and a pedagogy of connection

A case is made for working in higher education across and between disciplines, variously known as inter- and multidisciplinarity. Integrativism is proposed as an inclusive term for these different but related modes of academic work. Working integratively is presented as a creative activity. The application of integrativism to the curriculum leads to the notion of a pedagogy of connection. Sociocultural theory is a theoretical foundation for a pedagogy of connection which consists of a framework for focusing on the contexts of connection and tools for making connections. Activity theory is the basis of analysing context and analogy and conceptual blending are examples of tools. The pedagogy of connection is demonstrated through the example of a sense of place. The example takes the form of a design experiment.     

“Darker than any prison,hotter than any human flame”: Punishment,choice, and culpability in A Clockwork Orange

Contemporary textbooks in criminal justice use A Clockwork Orange to illustrate issues of correctional and sentencing practices. This article challenges criminal justice faculty and students to use the film to explore the political and social realities of punishment, in particular the examination of the moral question of “voluntariness” and the implications for “treatment” as a mechanism of social control. This paper explores the moral questions of state sponsored social control and using the film satire invites the student to examine their beliefs about the political and social realities of punishment and rehabilitation.     

Delivery Method: Does it Matter? A Study of the North Carolina Developmental Mathematics Redesign

In 2009, the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) began the process of redesigning developmental mathematics (DMA) courses. The first classes were offered in 2012 with final state implementation in fall 2013. The purpose of this study was to examine the subsequent gateway course success rates achieved by former DMA students in relation to the delivery method (i.e., teacher-centered, student-centered, and computer-centered) used in the redesigned North Carolina DMA courses. Students included in this study took a gateway math course and a developmental math course during the same or previous academic year. Students who participated in student-centered and computer-centered instruction in their DMA course had a statistically significant pass rate in subsequent gateway courses compared with students receiving teacher-centered instruction. Along with the findings, this paper discusses considerations for redesign, including the choice of delivery methods and instructional techniques, and recommendations for further research.     

‘Behind the teacher's back’: an ethnographic study of deaf people's schooling experiences in the Republic of Ireland

Historically, the valuing of deaf children's voices on their own schooling has been underrepresented in educational policies, curriculum frameworks and discursive practices and, in particular, in the debates and controversies surrounding oralism and Irish Sign Language in deaf education in Ireland. This article discusses children's everyday lived experiences of oralism and Irish Sign Language using ethnographic interviews and observational methods. The data yielded narrative understandings of how deaf children's schooling experiences served as a cauldron for the development of time, space and relational domains for individual and collective self-expression, cultural production and reproduction of the secret lore and understandings of Irish Sign Language and development of a hidden curriculum of sign language in a policy and practice context dominated by oralism. This paper concludes with recommendations for the development of a sign bilingual curriculum across the full scope and sequence of schooling in Ireland.     

The Principalship in Transition

Many individuals enter administration not fully prepared for their roles. This is because many preparatory programs have persistent weaknesses in the linkage between theory and practice, are irrelevant and grossly inadequate for the current responsibilities of the principalship, and overlook teaching the social realities of administrative roles. Along with aligning administrative programs with standards of effective leadership, the social side of administration must be considered and addressed.     

NOTES ON ONGOING RESEARCH IN SPECIAL EDUCATION

ABSTRACT

With the support of Unicef and Unesco, the Romanian Ministry of Education has since 1993 been operating a programme to promote the educational and social integration of children and young people with special needs. In a comparatively short time the programme has grown from a pair of pilot projects to comprise a number of interactive elements which include a Joint European Project within the EU's TEMPUS programme, as well as provision for networking, and for describing, monitoring and generalizing experience of good practice. In this process a ‘philosophy’ of integration has developed which is appropriate to Romanian realities and which offers the possibility of an integration project to everyone concerned with special needs. The paper stresses the importance of the voluntary organizations and their new cooperative relationship with the institutions, and of the role of the universities in professional training. The paper ends with a discussion of the barriers and supports to integration, together with some conclusions about the significance and future of the programme.