“I Don't Sing!” Teaching Music in After-School Settings With Untrained High School Male Voices

This article explores the triumphs and tensions inherent in coaching adolescent male singers, particularly when blending skill-building and performance preparation.     

Factors relating to regular education teacher burnout in inclusive education

The aims of the research were to identify the environmental factors that relate to the work of regular school teachers who have students with special needs in their classroom, and to find out the correlation between these factors and teacher burnout. A total 330 primary school teachers filled in a questionnaire that had three parts: (1) personal background data; (2) the Friedman’s burnout questionnaire; and (3) environmental features typical of the work of school teachers that include students with special needs in their classroom, in four areas: psychological features, organizational, structural and social. Results show that the background data that related significantly to burnout was teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion. The more positive the attitude was, the more the teacher experienced burnout in the category of self‐fulfilment. This finding was contrary to the hypothesis of the research. Two other background variables were found to relate to the de‐personalization aspect of burnout, teaching higher‐grade students and having an additional administrative role in school. Two other findings that were found to correlate with higher burnout rates were the number of students with special needs in class (more than 20%) and very little assistance provided to the teacher. Three environmental factors were found to have negative correlation with burnout: the organizational factor, the psychological and the social, with the latter being the most significantly negatively correlated with burnout—i.e. the less social support the teacher experienced, the higher was her level of burnout.     

Teaching and learning the concept of chemical bonding

Chemical bonding is one of the key and basic concepts in chemistry. The learning of many of the concepts taught in chemistry, in both secondary schools as well as in the colleges, is dependent upon understanding fundamental ideas related to chemical bonding. Nevertheless, the concept is perceived by teachers, as well as by learners, as difficult, with teaching commonly leading to students developing misconceptions. Many of these misconceptions result from over‐simplified models used in text books, by the use of traditional pedagogy that presents a rather limited and sometimes incorrect picture of the issues related to chemical bonding and by assessments of students' achievement that influence the way the topic is taught. In addition, there are discrepancies between scientists regarding key definitions in the topic and the most appropriate models to teach it. In particular, teaching models that are intended to have transitional epistemological value in introducing abstract ideas are often instead understood by students as accounts of ontological reality. In this review paper we provide science educators, curricula developers and pre‐service and in‐service professional development providers an up‐to‐date picture regarding research and developments in teaching about chemical bonding. We review the external and internal variables that might lead to misconceptions and the problematic issue of using limited teaching/learning models. Finally, we review the approaches to teaching the concept that might overcome some of these misconceptions.     

What influences transfer of training in an African agricultural research network?

Purpose: This study determined the extent to which transfer of training among trainees from national partners of an international bean research network in Africa was perceived to have taken place; including determining the factors that predicted transfer of training back to the job. Methodology/approach: Online data collection using the Learning Transfer Systems Inventory (LTSI) from 139 respondents was made and analyzed using bivariate correlations and hierarchical multiple regression. Findings: An average of 75% of the training skills were perceived as transferred. ‘Personal capacity’ significantly predicted transfer, while ‘motivation to transfer’, ‘transfer design’, ‘supervisor’, and ‘peer support’ positively correlated with training transfer. Theoretical implications: The LTSI factors remain relevant explanations for training transfer with in African agricultural research and development organizations. Certain work environments are likely to have new factors such as ‘Supervisor and peer’ support which operated as one explanatory factor for training transfer, revealed the closeness of supervisors and peers in agricultural research and development settings. Practical implications: The international agricultural research network needs to consider the trainees’ ability to transfer new training given workload-related hindrances. Originality/value: The applicability of the LTSI for international agencies that conduct training for agricultural research and development in Africa has been tested. Such institutions need policies that enhance trainee capacity to transfer training to the work place.     

‘You Never Know,Things Might Have Once Existed’: Young Readers Engaging with Postmodern Texts that Blur the Boundaries between Fact and Fiction

This article considers children’s engagement with the Ologies, a series of postmodern texts that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. It follows on from a text-based analysis of the series published in this journal (22(3) 2015). Data collected from 9–12 year olds demonstrate how actual readers took up the invitation offered by the text and were able to identify the tension between realism and fantasy, oscillate between different genres, stop to play games and use the tactile to make meaning. In addition, they willingly brought their own knowledge of the world to the text and were able to tease out meanings through dialogic interaction. We argue that the meaningful discussion that ensued is due to the multi-layered nature of the books which offers agency to the pupils with little adult interference.     

Enacting post-reflexive teacher education

The purpose of this article is to re-conceptualize Schön’s call for a phenomenology of practice – moving away from reflection and towards post-reflexion – by explicitly drawing on philosophical and methodological tenets of phenomenology, specifically some of Vagle’s theorizing of a post-intentional phenomenology. Finally, we use this conception of post-reflexion to articulate a set of three concrete post-reflexive pedagogies of teacher education – An Affective Pedagogy; A Post-Reflexive Entangled Pedagogy; and An Interrogated “Assumptions of Normality” Pedagogy.     

The effectiveness and retention of teachers with prior career experience

As schools and districts seek to recruit teachers, individuals in non-teaching professions are an appealing possible pool. These potential teachers come with work experience and may have expertise that would serve them well in the classroom. While there has been substantial rhetoric assailing the virtues of teachers with prior professional experience, no research that we know of has assessed the effectiveness of these teachers in terms of student learning. This study uses data from New York City to assess the relative effectiveness and retention of career-switchers. It provides some evidence that these teachers are no more effective than other new teachers, and, in fact, they appear to be less effective at raising math scores of elementary and middle school students. There is little difference in overall transfer or leave rates between teachers with prior experience and other teachers, although career-switchers from college recommended programs do appear more likely to transfer schools.     

The moderating capacity of racial identity between perceived discrimination and psychological well-being over time among African American youth

This study examined the influence of racial identity in the longitudinal relation between perceptions of racial discrimination and psychological well-being for approximately 560 African American youth. Latent curve modeling (LCM) and parallel process multiple-indicator LCMs with latent moderators were used to assess whether perceptions of racial discrimination predicted the intercept (initial levels) and the slope (rate of change) of psychological well-being over time, and whether racial identity moderates these relations. The results indicated that African American adolescents who reported higher psychological responses to discrimination frequency levels at the first time point had lower initial levels of well-being. Regressing the slope factor for psychological well-being on the frequency of discrimination also revealed a nonsignificant result for subsequent well-being levels.     

Troubling reflexivity: the identity flows of teachers becoming mothers

This paper explores the transition to first‐time motherhood as experienced by a small sub‐sample of women engaged in the professional care of young children. In the context of a wider study of motherhood in the UK, their experience of combining work with new motherhood was distinctive. Women who professionally care for young children present a counter‐narrative to the view that teaching and motherhood can be blended. Negotiating the boundaries between work and motherhood produced a troubling reflexivity in which difficult feelings emerged and collided. Working in urban education involves emotionally intense forms of attachment that are disrupted by pregnancy. Becoming a mother prompts a renegotiation of professional and personal boundaries, leading women to pursue mothering as a separate enterprise, marked by individual solutions to care and career. Separating themselves from their working environment, women simultaneously isolate themselves from their middle‐class counterparts who pay for childcare and return to work.