Barriers to career progress for women in education: the perceptions of female headteachers

The number of women who achieve senior posts in educational management is disproportionate to the number of women employed. This is particularly true for women in secondary education, where only about 20 per cent of headships are held by women. All the female headteachers of one English shire county were interviewed about their own experiences and views on barriers to women's progress. The interview schedule was based on the author's classification of the theories of Shakeshaft and Schmuck. The data are analysed under the headings of: overt and covert discrimination; constraints experienced within the work situation; and constraints experienced through roles outside the work situation and early career influences. The headteachers had experienced both overt discrimination and more subtle sexism and tended to meet both with pragmatism, rather than confrontation. They had avoided gender‐stereotyped roles within the work situation, and were generally free of the major responsibility for domestic affairs. As children, they had been aware of high educational expectations held of them by their parents. Supportive partnerships and minimal career breaks had been important in their progress.     

Similarities in the social competencies of learning disabled and low achieving elementary school children.

This study sought to examine distinctions in social competencies between children with learning disabilities (LD) and other children who also experience academic difficulties. Eighty-five children with LD (54 male, 31 female) in Grades 3 through 6 from a large urban school district were compared to a group of low achieving (LA) peers matched on achievement as well as sex, race, and grade. The samples were 42% black, 39% Hispanic, and 19% Anglo. Both groups completed two self-concept questionnaires, a loneliness scale, and a measure of their social relationships outside of school. In addition, their classmates completed a peer rating scale and their teachers completed two ratings of the child's social skills. The results indicated that children with LD and LA children were comparable on most measures, although children with LD reported themselves as being less lonely than LA children. In addition, regular-class children rated children with LD as more likable than LA children. The results highlight similarities in the social competencies of children with LD and LA children and suggest that special education classes may offer some social advantages to children with mild handicaps.     

THE RACIAL STRESS OF MEMBERSHIP: DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACULTY INVENTORY OF RACIALIZED EXPERIENCES IN SCHOOLS

Research on the experience of faculty of color in predominately White independent schools (PWIS) is limited. This study explored faculty of varying racial backgrounds and their initiation of, interactions with, and stress reactions to racial conflicts within the school settings using an online survey. Several measures were developed according to the Racial/Ethnic Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory (recast) model and administered to 339 faculty participants. Using factor analytic and correlational analyses, results from the highly reliable measures found that Black faculty show significantly less trust in schools to manage racial conflict, lower sense of school membership, greater racial stress, and more racial socialization than their White counterparts do. With reliable and valid measures on the racialized experiences of faculty in PWIS, future research can ask better questions on how much racial politics influence diversity initiatives, including faculty and student recruitment and retention, supportive racial and intellectual climate, and organizational mission and professional development. Implications for the development of racially relevant measures in schools are discussed.     

Professional role and identity of Icelandic preschool teachers: effects of stakeholders’ views

In this article, we explore the reality of Icelandic preschool teachers who are, as in most other countries, predominantly female. The gendered nature of the role and the current identity adopted by preschool teachers appear to impact on their perceived status and professionalism. In this process, stakeholders in early childhood education (ECE), as well as the preschool teachers themselves, play important parts. The question that underlies the paper is: ‘How do the views of preschool teachers and stakeholders in ECE affect the preschool teachers’ professional identity?’ The data used to answer the question are from focus group research carried out with preschool teachers and stakeholders in ECE in one community in Iceland. These stakeholders, besides preschool teachers and staff within the preschools, were parents, professionals at the municipal preschool office and politicians. The theoretical perspective informing the methodology of the research was ‘symbolic interactionism’ and the concept of ‘democratic professionalism’ was used as an aspirational framework to analyse the data. The findings reveal connections between the ideology relating to the preschool teachers’ educational role, their limited leadership and the gendered views of stakeholders. At the end of the paper, implications and recommendations for preschool teachers are suggested.     

Effects of Headings on Text Summarization

A summarization task was used to study whether headings influence readers' representations of the topic structure of a text. College students (Experiments 1-3) and sixth- and eighth-graders (Experiment 3) summarized a multiple topic text that (a) included headings introducing every new subtopic, (b) included headings introducing half of the new subtopics, or (c) included no headings. In all experiments, topics were more likely to be included in a summary if they were signaled than if they were not signaled. This effect was magnified when the text was only half signaled: Signaled topics were more likely to appear in a summary if only half the text topics were signaled than if all of the topics were signaled; however, unsignaled topics were less likely to appear in a summary if half of the text topics were signaled than if none of the text topics were signaled. The findings demonstrate that readers rely heavily on headings in a task that emphasizes attention to a text's topic structure. It is suggested that previously observed signaling effects on text recall are mediated by effects on how readers represent a text's topic structure. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.