Exploring the dimensionality of self-perceived performance assessment literacy (PAL)

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - Performance assessments attempt to provide a practical and authentic demonstration of students’ learning. Despite growing investments...     

Special issue of TEJ: what is to be done with curriculum and educational foundations’ critical knowledges? New qualitative research on conscientizing preservice and in-service teachers

ABSTRACT

In this essay, we provide a brief introductory statement to the special issue of Teaching Education titled What is To Be Done with Curriculum and Educational Foundations’ Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers. In our introductory statement, we describe the specific aim and broad purposes of the special issue and characterize its contents. Our specific aim with the special issue is to advance the conscientization of preservice and in-service teachers via critical pedagogies and race-based epistemologies. Our broad purposes are to (a) resist the ascendant, whitened, and Eurocentric fascism via our collective pedagogical labor in teacher education and (b) reorient curriculum and educational foundations' critical knowledges toward institutional praxis. We conclude our introductory statement by characterizing the contents of the special issue for teacher educators and teacher education researchers.     

Black on Black Education: Personally Engaged Pedagogy for/by African American Pre-Service Teachers

Public schools have increasing numbers of its teachers fitting into one demographic, white and female, while the numbers of African American teachers decrease (Ladson-Billings, Crossing over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms. San Francisco: Josey-Bass [2001]). Furthermore, African American collegiates who decide to enter teaching may face a chilly climate as a result of their cultural and educational experiences as they encounter devaluation in the classroom (Delpit, Other Peoples Children: Cultural Conflict in the Class room. New York: The New Press [1995]). As a result, African American pre-service teachers may question the validity of the formal curriculum presented in college as it conflicts with their perceptions of school, thereby, leaving teacher-educators largely responsible for the quality of life and subsequent devotion to profession of these students. Critical autoethnography, using fieldnotes/research journaling, and student memoirs all through a theoretical backdrop of critical race feminism provide a glimpse into the teaching and learning experiences and dilemmas of one African American female teacher educator utilizing what I call personally engaged pedagogy as a means of enhancing the quality of the learning experiences of her African American pre-service teachers.     

Implicit bias in letters of recommendation for an undergraduate research internship

Letters of recommendation are commonly used to assess the potential of undergraduate students to be successful undergraduate research assistants/interns or their potential as graduate students. However, there is evidence to suggest that reference letters can include unconscious (or implicit) bias that can affect decisions and limit opportunities for under-represented minorities and students from non-research institutions. This study uses a text analysis software program to examine 457 letters of recommendation for undergraduate students applying to undertake international research experience to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference in the language used to describe the students accepted into the programme (n = 36 letters) compared to those who were not accepted (n = 421 letters). Results suggest that letters of recommendation for the accepted students describe the productivity of the students with greater certainty and include a greater number of quotes from student work. In comparison, the letters for those students who were not accepted into the programme include more positive emotion and describe the insight of the student, but include more words associated with discrepancy and tentative statements. Despite no statistically significant differences in grade point averages, a similar pattern was observed between male and female applicants, white and non-white applicants, and applicants from research and non-research institutions. Results suggest a need to standardise letters of recommendation to ensure that the biases are minimised and do not present a barrier to increasing diversity in undergraduate research.     

Striking a Balance Between Innovation and Standards: A Study of Teachers Implementing Project-Based Approaches to Teaching Science

This research reports on the efforts of six middle school and high school science teachers in a public school district in New York City to balance innovative teaching methods and strategies with the New York State Learning Standards and Regents requirements. More specifically, this research examines the factors that influenced the implementation of project-based approaches to teaching and learning science. Observations of meetings and classrooms, and collection of artifacts such as curricula, project planners, demographic profiles, student work, and test results served as the primary data sources that were triangulated and related to current theory on project-based learning in science. Four teachers embraced aspects of project-based learning in science and two rejected most aspects of teaching project-based learning in science. Implications for science professional development are discussed.     

Impact of Culturally Aligned Supports on Native Hawaiian High School Students’ College Attendance: A Qualitative Perspective

The contemporary education system in the United States is inadequate in the provision of services to assure that all students exit high school with the knowledge and skills necessary to enter postsecondary education or the workforce. This is particularly true for indigenous youth (Tanabe & Mobley, 2011). According to scholars, dual enrollment appears to be an appropriate solution for assisting indigenous youth to perform better in high school and to be better prepared to enter postsecondary education and the workforce (Rodriguez, Hughes, & Belfield, 2012; Vargas, Roach, & David, 2014). As demonstrated in this study, promoting dual enrollment programs, for Native Hawaiian youth, along with mentorship and financial assistance, has a positive impact on post high school outcomes. Thus, after describing the goals and model of Project Ho‘oku‘i, this article reports on the experiences and perceptions of Native Hawaiian youth who participated in a dual enrollment program (i.e., enrolled in high school and postsecondary education simultaneously). This study utilized grounded theory methodology. Focus groups, with semi-structured open-ended questions, were conducted with 103 participants over a 24-month period. The findings of the research comprise two major themes that are concerned with Native Hawaiian students’ educational Progress at large and address the issue of relationality, including the practice of self-sufficiency in sorting through future career options and learning one’s sense of self-in-society, in particular its relational aspects.     

Stickers to Facts,Imposers, Democracy Advocators,and Committed Impartialists: Preservice Science Teachers’ Beliefs About Teacher’s Roles in Socioscientific Discourses

For science teachers using the discourse of socioscientific issues (SSI), it is important to make a decision as to whether when and how to disclose their own positions. The existing limited literature shows that science teachers prefer one of four roles during SSI discourse: sticker to facts, imposer, democracy advocator, and committed impartialist. The purpose of the present research is to understand the nature of preservice science teachers’ (PST) beliefs underlying such selection. Based on existing literature, we developed a teacher’s belief questionnaire including vignettes representing four teacher’s roles in discussion of genetically modified (GM) foods. Three hundred twenty-four (324) PSTs from a Turkish context experiencing SSI-based reforms completed these questionnaires, selected one of the teacher’s roles, and justified their selection by writing reasons. Content analysis procedures were used in data analysis of this qualitative study. The results show that most PSTs selected dialogical roles (democracy advocators and committed impartialists). Looking at their beliefs, epistemologies and teaching goals work together in PSTs’ selection of their preferred role. In addition, we argue that there is no desired alignment between teachers’ existing beliefs and expectations of SSI reforms. We conclude by indicating certain implications that may enhance such alignment.     

Governing individualized risk biographies: new class intellectuals and the problem of youth at‐risk

An apparent crisis of youth at‐risk is a key marker in contemporary debates about young people among a range of intellectuals, social commentators and experts in various domains and centres of expertise. Drawing on aspects of the reflexive modernization, governmentality and feminist literatures, this paper explores how risk discourses emerge as a means for rendering reality knowable—a technique that facilitates the management of individual biographies in institutionally structured risk environments. In this context there is intellectual work to be done in the social sciences that takes as its object the possibilities and limits of institutionalized intellectual abstraction for problematizing youth via rationalities of risk—and the limits of these rationalities for providing resources for governing our thoughts, actions and dispositions—our freedom.