Finding Diego: A Bilingual Student Integrates School,Language, and Identity

This article presents a mixed-methods case study of Diego, a bilingual teen who completed public school in Florida. During adolescence, Diego negotiated multiple identities: successful student, Mexican American, bilingual, and typical U.S. teenager. Diego provided interviews and bilingual (English/Spanish) writing (narrative/expository) in 2008 (at age 12, Grade 6) and in 2012 (at age 16, Grade 10). A qualitative analysis of his interviews and a quantitative linguistic analysis of his writing reveal central elements of Diego’s language development as related to academic English and identity. Educational implications for working with bilingual adolescents are discussed.     

Promoting Metacognitive Decision-Making in Teacher Education

Effective teachers are characterized by their abilities to make thoughtful, deliberate, and informed adaptations while teaching (Hoffman & Pearson, 2000). These in-the-moment teaching decisions are guided by a complex web of teacher knowledge. Raising teachers' awareness of the decisions they make on a moment-by-moment basis may aid in thoughtful, more deliberate decision-making and more robust instruction. We charge that preservice teachers can acquire this skill, as well. This article highlights practices employed in preservice teacher education courses as a means to promote awareness of, and engagement with, in-the-moment teaching decisions. Using examples from mathematics, social studies, and literacy methods courses, we describe our processes to intentionally cultivate preservice teachers' adaptive teaching skills through metacognitive decision-making.     

Using the Objective Borderline Method (OBM) to support Board of Examiners’ decisions in a medical programme

Decisions about progress through an academic programme are made by Boards of Examiners, on the basis of students’ course assessments. For most students such pass/fail grading decisions are straightforward. However, for those students whose results are borderline (either at a pass/fail boundary or boundaries between grades) the exercise of some discretion by university staff is required. In the interests of the transparency of the exercise of this discretion and to increase the chances that the ‘right’ decision is made, we tested the validity of the second version of the Objective Borderline Method (OBM2) decision-making tool in a medical programme. Our results suggest that application of OBM2 provides valid data to help university staff make robust decisions about a student’s progression through a programme, and with which to defend these decisions if that should be required.     

Liberal studies and critical pedagogy in further education colleges: ‘where their eyes would be opened’ (sometimes)

This paper revisits the liberal studies movement, a significant feature of the English further education (FE) sector from the 1950s until the beginning of the 1980s. Its central argument is that liberal and general studies (LS/GS) and similar provision offered a vehicle where, at least in some circumstances, certain politically-motivated FE teachers were able to engage in forms of mutual, dialogic teaching and learning which can be conceptualised as critical pedagogy—or at least as close to critical pedagogy as can be achieved within the formal education system in a nation such as England. The paper draws on interviews with former FE lecturers who taught various forms of liberal studies to vocational students in FE colleges across England during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Whilst it is recognised that LS/GS was always contested terrain, data presented in this paper provide evidence to suggest that the spirit of critical pedagogy existed amongst a certain strand within the liberal studies movement, at least for a time—even if not all learners wished to be emancipated by their studies.