Construction and validation of a survey instrument to determine the gender-related challenges faced by pre-service male primary teachers

The gender-related challenges facing males entering the primary-school teaching profession have been well documented in the academic literature over recent decades. The majority of these data have come about through qualitative reports. Whilst qualitative methods provide important perspectives into these issues, the use of valid and reliable quantitative survey tools has received less attention. This paper discusses the construction, piloting, and subsequent tests for reliability and validity involved in developing a robust survey tool to measure the gender-related challenges faced by pre-service male primary teachers during their university study and professional experience in schools. Utilizing Senocak's four stages of survey development and Rasch modelling techniques, data analysis showed high levels of validity and reliability for the survey tool.     

Developing Best Practices for Machine Translation Using Google Translate and OCR Terminal

This article describes a process of developing a set of best practices for machine translation at an off-site storage facility. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software is tested, along with various machine translation programs, to develop a free system to translate non-English materials for staff and users. There is also a brief literature review regarding some reasons why libraries should be concerned with translating materials into other languages.     

Dancing with the Monster: Teachers Discuss Racism,Power, and White Privilege in Education

The Urban Review - Teachers do not often have opportunities to openly examine and discuss issues of racism, power, and white privilege. In fact, as Lisa Delpit and other educators have pointed out,...     

Stemming the Tide of Rising School Exclusions: Problems and Possibilities

This paper argues that the New Labour government' school effectiveness/target-setting strategy for reducing school exclusions is a flawed one. It deflects blame on to individual schools for problems which have as their source more deep-seated changes both in educational policy and in the wider society. A more positive way forward is to learn lessons from the recent research literature addressing the causes of the increase in school exclusions.