Response to ACCEL: Emphasize Development,Domains, and Application

In this article, we provide a response to the Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model put forward by Sternberg (2017). Our commentary focuses on four critical areas that do not receive sufficient attention in Sternberg’s proposed model: (a) the developmental nature of giftedness; (b) that giftedness is domain specific, particularly at later stages in the talent development process; (c) the challenge in applying ACCEL in the real world of schools; and (d) whether the arts and other performance areas are compelled to have an ethical theme in order to be valuable.     

The promise of dynamic systems approaches for an integrated account of human development

After decades of theoretical fragmentation and insularity, a converging explanatory framework based on general scientific principles is an important goal for developmental psychology. Dynamic systems approaches may provide such a framework, using principles of self-organization to explain how novel forms emerge without predetermination and become increasingly complex with development. New trends in traditional theoretical families emphasize systemic, emergent processes, and these can now be explicated with principles of self-organization that apply to all natural systems. Self-organization thus provides a single explanation for the multiple facets of development, integrating diverse developmental viewpoints within a larger scientific perspective.     

Reasons for aggressive classroom management and directions for change through teachers’ professional development programmes

This investigation was designed to determine whether there are significant relationships between the reasons teachers provide for aggressive classroom management techniques and the type of professional education created to help them reduce their reliance on such techniques. The study reports data from a survey of 192 Australian teachers showing that teachers’ gender and their school (primary or secondary) are related to rationales for teacher aggression. Teachers more accepting of the Attribution narrative as an explanation for teacher aggression are less likely to be supportive of gaining more knowledge about a misbehaving student. In contrast, those who more readily identify Efficacy as a reason for teacher aggression are more likely to gain more knowledge about a misbehaving student and about techniques that work with that student in other settings. Finally, teachers more accepting of the Attachment narrative did not exhibit a preference for any specific kind of support. Consequently, all types of PD activities might contribute to teachers who are seeking to feel close to students.     

Implementing Effective Online Teaching Practices: Voices of Exemplary Faculty

This qualitative study explores the process of implementing effective online teaching practices through interviews with thirty exemplary instructors. Emergent themes include providing students with constructive feedback, fostering interaction and involvement, facilitating student learning, and maintaining instructor presence and organization. Analyses of the findings and implications for online instruction are presented.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education.Cassandra C. Lewis is a research assistant at the University of Maryland University College. She is also a doctoral candidate in the department of Education Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park. Husein Abdul-Hamid is Associate Provost and Executive Director of the Office of Evaluation, Research, and Grants at the University of Maryland University College. He holds a Ph.D. in Statistics from American University.     

Vygotsky and moral education: A response to and expansion of Tappan

Despite increasing studies and applications of Vygotsky’s theory of learning and development, little has been written connecting Vygotsky specifically to moral education. The most comprehensive attempt at formulating such an account is given by Mark Tappan. I critically evaluate Tappan’s account before raising several problems for his approach. I then offer suggestions for resolving these issues by turning to research in socialization theory and recommending additional sociocultural artifacts that can supplement moral education.     

‘Becoming European’? Respatialising the European Schools System through PISA for Schools

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) PISA for Schools, a local variant of the more-renowned ‘main PISA’ test that measures and compares individual school performance on reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems. Here, I address the governance implications of how PISA for Schools data has been taken up by the transnational European Schools System (ESS). Drawing suggestively across new ‘relational’ thinking around data-driven modes of governance, as well as interviews with key policy actors within the ESS, I show how PISA for Schools reflects contradictory logics within the ESS, in which the inherently context-based goal of ‘becoming European’ is juxtaposed with the desire to employ decontextualised international evidence. I conclude by exploring how the perceived need for such data, associated with the global authority of the OECD, can produce a problematic focus on data-driven practices.     

Science inquiry and student diversity: Enhanced abilities and continuing difficulties after an instructional intervention

This study examines elementary students' abilities to conduct science inquiry through their participation in an instructional intervention over a school year. The study involved 25 third and fourth grade students from six elementary schools representing diverse linguistic and cultural groups. Prior to and at the completion of the intervention, the students participated in elicitation sessions as they conducted a semistructured inquiry task on evaporation. The results indicate that students demonstrated enhanced abilities with some aspects of the inquiry task, but continued to have difficulties with other aspects of the task even after instruction. Although students from all demographic subgroups showed substantial gains, students from non‐mainstream and less privileged backgrounds in science showed greater gains in inquiry abilities than their more privileged counterparts. The results contribute to the emerging literature on designing learning environments that foster science inquiry of elementary students from diverse backgrounds. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 607–636, 2006     

Changing attitudes to cultural difference: perceptions of Muslim families in English schools

This article argues that neoliberal and neoconservative schooling policies in England legitimise a long-standing neglect of cultural difference in schools, and are having a particularly damaging effect on Muslim children’s experience of schooling. It offers evidence that relationships between teachers and Muslim families in particular may be becoming more distant, and argues that this is largely a result of a complex series of pressures on teachers’ working lives. Interview data from a small-scale interpretive, empirical study of eight primary teachers suggests that in some schools the most frequent response to issues involving Muslim families is avoidance. It is suggested this is because teachers did not see Muslims as individuals, but as representatives of an essentially different group. However, a major finding of this study is that when teachers were able to make connections with families, they gained a more complex understanding of the realities of the Muslim children in their classes.