The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment

The disproportionate discipline of African-American students has been extensively documented; yet the reasons for those disparities are less well understood. Drawing upon one year of middle-school disciplinary data for an urban school district, we explored three of the most commonly offered hypotheses for disproportionate discipline based on gender, race, and socioeconomic status. Racial and gender disparities in office referrals, suspensions, and expulsions were somewhat more robust than socioeconomic differences. Both racial and gender differences remained when controlling for socioeconomic status. Finally, although evidence emerged that boys engage more frequently in a broad range of disruptive behavior, there were no similar findings for race. Rather, there appeared to be a differential pattern of treatment, originating at the classroom level, wherein African-American students are referred to the office for infractions that are more subjective in interpretation. Implications for teacher training and structural reform are explored.     

Activist dispositions for social justice in advantaged and disadvantaged contexts of schooling

This article advances current conceptions of teacher activism through an exploration of the social justice dispositions of teachers in advantaged and disadvantaged contexts of schooling. We interrogate the practices of teachers in a government school, with a high proportion of refugee students and students from low socio-economic backgrounds, in a high-fees, multi-campus independent school, and in a disadvantaged Systemic Catholic school to illustrate how Bourdieu’s notion of dispositions (which are constitutive of the habitus) and Fraser’s distinction between affirmative and transformative justice are together productive of four types of teacher activism. Specifically, we show that activist dispositions can be characterised as either affirmative or transformative in stance and as either internally or externally focused in relation to the education field. We argue that the social, cultural and material conditions of schools are linked to teachers’ activist dispositions and conclude with the challenge for redressing educational inequalities by fostering a transformative activism in teachers’ practices.     

Examining the practice of beginning teachers’ micropolitical literacy within professional inquiry communities

This paper investigates beginning teachers collaboratively making sense of and responding to the micropolitical environments of their schools. Drawing on a qualitative multi-case study conducted within the context of a university-sponsored, inquiry-based induction program, this research employs a community of practice frame to examine how novice teachers came to practice “micropolitical literacy.” The paper identifies four dimensions of micropolitical discourse that surfaced in the situated setting of the inquiry groups. The analysis further illustrates how beginning teachers, while participating in inquiry groups, coconstructed understandings of the organizational structures and professional cultures of their schools.     

The Irish ‘Working Group on Information Literacy’ – Edging towards a national policy

The authors of this paper provide an overview of the activities of the Irish Working Group on Information Literacy (WGIL) and its role in advancing a national policy for information literacy in the Republic of Ireland.The study focuses on the work of the group during its lifetime including the various activities, marketing and advocacy initiatives and some of the challenges and issues the group faced, in particular, the diversity of the Irish library and information sector and the lack of an integrated approach for information literacy development.The study presents the findings of the report produced by WGIL entitled Library Association of Ireland: Working Group on Information Literacy: Review of Cross-Sector Activity 2006–2008 and Initial Recommendations for Further Action which reviewed best practices and information literacy activities in the various LIS sectors in the Republic of Ireland during a two-year period. The key recommendation of this report is for the leadership of the Library Association of Ireland to develop a national information literacy strategy that advocates for the importance of information literacy as a lifelong and transferable skill.     

An examination of the effect of customized reading modules on diverse secondary students’ reading comprehension and motivation

This research sought to add to a body of knowledge that is severely underrepresented in the scientific literature, the effects of technological tools on reading comprehension and reading motivation in diverse secondary students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The study implemented an independent silent reading (ISR) program across a 5-month semester in an urban public high school and included 145 participants from nine 10th grade literature classes. The control group took part in no ISR, one treatment group participated in weekly ISR read from a textbook, and another treatment group participated in weekly ISR read from a computer module designed to address essential components of reading. Students were measured on global reading comprehension, text-specific reading assessments, and reading motivation. After controlling for initial skill and disposition levels, the results indicated that students from both ISR groups made greater gains than the control group in global reading comprehension, while the computer reading module group outperformed the textbook group and the control on text-specific assignments and increased their reading motivation to a greater degree than those in the other conditions. This research offers much-needed data on secondary students?? reading achievement and disposition and provides evidence that ISR implemented through the use of instructional technology and cognitive tools has broad potential to address development in these areas.