Recognising the needs of gender-variant children and their parents

Gender variance confronts widely held assumptions that children born as males will act like ‘boys’ and children born as females will act like ‘girls’. This imposed binary has the effect of perpetuating negativity towards people who express themselves with gendered variations in attire, behaviour or preferences. Despite the existence of gender-variant individuals in every culture and throughout time, many people are unaware that diversity in gender expression and sexual formation is a naturally occurring phenomenon. This qualitative study aimed to establish the needs of gender-variant children and their parents in order to inform education programmes, policies and clinical approaches to gender variance. Three Internet surveys were conducted to explore the experiences of parents raising gender-variant children, the childhood experiences of transgender adults and the views of professionals who work with the transgender community. The needs of gender-variant children emerged in terms of the need for information, peer contact, personal gender expression, safety, and to be heard and accepted by their parents. The most common needs for parents were for information (stories from other parents, research and guidelines; peer support) and educational resources for schools, professionals and local communities. The paper provides comparisons between the three participant groups and recommendations for future research.     

Student Flow Between Community Colleges: Investigating Lateral Transfer

The traditional unidirectional (“linear”) postsecondary path from high school to a community college to a 4-year institution into the workforce represents accurately a decreasing proportion of the pathways actually taken by students through higher education. Instead, students increasingly exhibit patterns of enrollment that take them through multiple postsecondary institutions, both within levels of the higher education system (e.g., multiple community colleges, multiple 4-year institutions) and across levels (e.g., movement back and forth between community colleges and 4-year institutions). These “swirling” patterns of enrollment are widely recognized by scholars of higher education, but they remain poorly understood. In this study, I employ data that address 89,057 first-time students in the California community college system to answer a number of key questions concerning lateral transfer between community colleges, which, according to prior research, constitutes one sizeable component of student “swirl”. Building on the very limited work on this topic, I examine whether the reported high prevalence of lateral transfer holds true under a more stringent operational framework than that employed in prior work. I explore whether lateral transfer is primarily an artifact of students enrolling simultaneously in multiple community colleges, sometimes called “double-dipping”. I investigate the timing of lateral transfer from several different perspectives to determine how lateral transfer fits in students’ progress and development. Finally, I probe the relationship between students’ level of academic investment in their current community college and the risk of lateral transfer.     

The fourth R: Reasoning

This study examined the self‐concept of a small group of academically gifted adolescents in New Zealand, with the aim of exploring gender differences. Using the Tennessee Self‐Concept Scale: 2, a sample of 40 male and female 15–18 year old students participated. Results indicated gender differences: males scored higher than females on most dimensions with the exception of Self‐Criticism, Moral Self‐Concept, and Inconsistent Responding. Additionally, the mean score was higher for males than females. Results indicate gender differences do occur in some New Zealand gifted adolescents and warrant the need for further research in this area.     

Classifying Community Colleges Based on Students’ Patterns of Use

In this study, I draw on Bahr’s (Research in Higher Education 51:724–749, 2010; New Directions for Institutional Research S1:33–48, 2011) behavioral typology of first-time community college students to examine college-level variation in students’ patterns of use of 105 community colleges in California. I find that students’ patterns of use vary greatly across the colleges, and, further, these patterns tend to cluster in such a fashion that colleges may be classified based on dominant or disproportionate patterns of use. Using k-means cluster analysis, I identify five types of community colleges, including Community Education Intensive, Transfer Intensive, Workforce Development Intensive, High-Risk Intensive, and Mixed Use. I describe each of these community college types and then investigate whether the patterns of student use that characterize the identified types appear to be primarily a consequence of institutional policies and practices or, conversely, a product of localized community demand and the associated circumstances and choices of the students who attend a given college. The evidence, though limited, tends to support the latter: variation in patterns of student use across institutions appears to be primarily a product of localized community demand. Finally, I draw on established performance indicators to examine the implications of the identified patterns of student use for observed institutional performance. I find that institutions that differ in terms of dominant or disproportionate patterns of student use also differ significantly and systematically on a number of measures of institutional performance.     

Developing and extending the literacy of bilingual pupils through the secondary years

Jean Bleach (a secondary English teacher) and Sylvia Riley (a specialist ESL teacher with in-school experience) together make up the ILEA project team, Second Language Learners in the Mainstream Project (10–14). The Project has an action-research orientation exploring and promoting conditions necessary for bilingual learners to develop English in the whole school context.     

Helping Teachers Grow: Toward Theory and Practice of an “Emergent Curriculum” Model of Staff Development

A model of developmentally appropriate practice in helping teachers grow is described. The model derives from a consideration of the psychological processes by which adults learn, and our desire to teach adults by the same methods we hope they will use in teaching children. The model includes a sequence of six kinds of interactions that the teacher trainer engages in with the teacher, from building trust to eliciting self-exploration. The concrete actions we take to create these kinds of interactions are described. This model of professional development was applied by a statewide project to increase the quality of child care in 150 classrooms serving primarily children from low-income families. Initial evaluations suggest it is working as hoped.     

Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) building relationships: one school’s quest to raise Indigenous learners’ literacy

In 2011 to 2012, 48 schools in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland participated in the Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) project. Central to this project was the establishment of positive working relationships between school principals and Indigenous community leaders in order to improve Indigenous literacy rates. Professional development in leadership skills and effective literacy instruction was provided through five professional learning modules. Participants worked together to create an action plan to support the literacy achievement of Indigenous students in their schools and communities. This article presents a case study of one participating school in Northern Queensland that successfully utilised the PALLIC framework to facilitate leadership actions and activities between Indigenous community and school leaders in order to form productive partnerships for the teaching of reading. In particular, the case study highlights the way that school leaders and Indigenous leaders established shared leadership and shared ways of learning in the school for reading outcomes of Indigenous students.