The meaning of out-of-field teaching for educational leadership

Assigning teachers to a position for which they are not suitably qualified influences effective educational leadership. The paper reveals assumptions and misconceptions about the lived experiences of teachers in out-of-field positions and what it means for effective educational leadership. The multilayered meaning of out-of-field teaching for quality education is an international concern which includes countries such as Australia, USA, UK, Korea, Europe, Turkey and South Africa. The paper reports on a transnational qualitative investigation conducted in Australia and South Africa at seven schools in different educational environments. The meaning of lived experiences in relation to out-of-field teaching and educational leadership is explored through the lenses of educational directors, principals, specialist and out-of-field teachers and parents. An in-depth discussion of the practical and social implications unveils taken-for-granted traditions and cultures in relation to out-of-field teaching. The paper concludes with an in-depth discussion of the meaning out-of-field teaching has for educational leadership, while it underlines specific complexities for decision-making and policy development. The need for further research in relation to educational leadership training and professional development in relation to the out-of-field situation is revealed.     

Wellbeing in schools: what do students tell us?

Until recently, children and young people’s perspectives have been largely overlooked in considering optimal approaches to supporting their wellbeing at school. This article reports student views on the meaning of ‘wellbeing’ and how this is best facilitated, gathered as part of a large, national research project aimed at understanding and improving approaches to wellbeing in schools. The data reported here were gathered through 67 focus groups, involving 606 primary and secondary school students, across three Catholic school regions in different Australian states. Students provided rich accounts of how they view their wellbeing, conceptualised across three interconnected themes of ‘being’, ‘having’ and ‘doing’. They identified relationships with self, teachers, friends, peers and significant others, as central to their wellbeing. The findings point to immense potential in accessing and utilising children and young people’s views for change and reform in schools in the area of student wellbeing.     

The effects of teacher-introduced multimodal representations and discourse on students’ task engagement and scientific language during cooperative,inquiry-based science

The study sought to determine the effects of teacher-introduced multimodal representations and discourse on students’ task engagement and scientific language during cooperative, inquiry-based science. The study involved eight Year 6 teachers in two conditions (four very effective teachers and four effective teachers) who taught two units of inquiry-based science across two school terms. The results show that the very effective teachers spent significantly more time engaged in using embodied representations to illustrate points or communicate information. They also spent significantly more time engaged in interrogating students’ understandings and scaffolding and challenging their thinking than the effective teachers. In turn, the students in the very effective teachers’ classes spent significantly more time on-task and used significantly more relevant basic and scientific language to explain the phenomena they were investigating than their peers in the effective teachers’ classes. These are behaviours and language that are associated with successful learning in science.     

Secondary Education and Research in New Zealand

Through the 1990s the secondary sector was a site of considerable change as the Government sought to ensure that the curriculum and associated assessment practices were designed to meet student needs and the long-term goals of New Zealand society. The new regime aimed to promote student achievement and in particular to attain more equitable educational outcomes for all New Zealand students. These were policy rather than practice driven initiatives that linked somewhat tenuously to research based evidence. This paper begins by giving an overview of the secondary sector in New Zealand and these educational reforms. The overview sets the context for the following section that describes links between educational research, policy and practice during this time. Key issues within the sector are highlighted and some of the ways research has been used to monitor changes and inform policy are identified. It is argued that much of the research over the past decade has been small scale and short term and while this has served the immediate policy agenda it has provided only fragmentary evidence to inform longer term goals such as improving student performance. The paper concludes by discussing some of the current initiatives that might contribute to improving the interface between research and policy/practice in secondary education. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Teachers' scaffolding behaviours during cooperative learning

This paper outlines the types of verbal interactions teachers engage in to challenge children's thinking and problem‐solving during cooperative learning. The paper also provides examples of how children model many of the verbal interactions they have seen demonstrated in their discourse with each other. It appears that when teachers are explicit in the types of thinking they want children to engage in, it encourages children to be more focused and explicit in the types of help they provide. Understanding the key role that teachers play in promoting thinking and problem‐solving in their students is particularly important given that it is the quality of talk that children generate that is a significant predictor of their learning.     

Touching the void: arts education research in Australia

This article is an overview of arts education research in Australia. The authors argue that there is an urgent need for key arts organisations to form strategic partnerships with arts educators to provide stronger research in the area of arts education. This research base would enhance the ability of policymakers, arts administrators and arts educators to argue for a stronger presence for arts education in schools. Many arts educators and researchers believe that engagement with the arts has value beyond the specific arts subjects themselves. International studies have indicated that important cognitive and social processes and capabilities are developed in arts-enriched experiences, which can be particularly significant for students who are at risk, disengaged and/or underachieving. While this realisation has stimulated action in other countries such as China, Singapore and Japan, arts education researchers in Australia currently make do with small-scale and often ad hoc research in an attempt to argue their case. The conclusions and recommendations of this article call for a series of strategic partnerships to touch or even fill the current void in arts education research in Australia.     

Constructivism as a liberal bourgeois discourse

Using the theoretical tools offered through the writings of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper develops a critique of constructivism. Constructivism has assumed a dominance with the field of mathematics education but, as an epistemology, it ignores the social implications of the construction of meaning. It is argued that constructivism is a liberal discourse which valorises the individual construction of meaning. In doing this, the social and political contexts in which mathematical knowledge is located is ignored and the marginalisation of many social and cultural groups is legitimated.     

Contents of Volume 4

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 4     

Activity theory,complexity and sports coaching: an epistemology for a discipline

The aim of this article is twofold. First, it is to advance the case for activity theory (AT) as a credible and alternative lens to view and research sports coaching. Second, it is to position this assertion within the wider debate about the epistemology of coaching. Following a framing introduction, a more comprehensive review of the development and current conceptualisation of AT is given. Here, AT's evolution through three distinct phases and related theorists, namely Vygotsky, Leont'ev and Engeström, is initially traced. This gives way to a more detailed explanation of AT's principal conceptual components, including ‘object’, ‘subject’, ‘tools’ (mediating artefacts), ‘rules’, a ‘community’ and a ‘division of labour’. An example is then presented from empirical work illustrating how AT can be used as a means to research sports coaching. The penultimate section locates such thinking within coaching's current ‘epistemological debate, arguing that the coaching ‘self’ is not an autonomous individual, but a relative part of social and cultural arrangements. Finally, a conclusion summarises the main points made, particularly in terms in presenting the grounding constructivist epistemology of AT as a potential way forward for sports coaching.