Toward an Expanded Understanding of Two-Way Bilingual Immersion Education: Constructing Identity through a Critical,Additive Bilingual/Bicultural Pedagogy

This literature review will take a focused look at the three currently accepted theoretical foundations upon which two-way bilingual immersion programs are based. Through an examination of research on identity construction in childhood and adolescence, particularly as seen through a critical pedagogical lens, it proposes that there exists a fourth and relatively unexamined component: identity construction. Further, it postulates that identity construction is of particular relevance to linguistic minority students.     

Knee extensor and flexor torque development with concentric and eccentric isokinetic training

This study assessed muscular torque and rate of torque development following concentric (CON) or eccentric (ECC) isokinetic training. Thirty-eight women were randomly assigned to either CON or ECC training groups. Training consisted of knee extension and flexion of the nondominant leg three times per week for 20 weeks (SD = 1). Eccentric training increased ECC knee extension and flexion peak torque more than CON training. The ECC group improved acceleration time and time to peak torque with ECC movements versus the CON group. Slow-velocity ECC isokinetic training yielded greater ECC and similar CON torque development gains versus CON training over the course of 20 weeks in young women.     

Curriculum innovation within an evaluative state: issues of risk and regulation

The English EAZ experience illustrates the difficulties of developing an innovative, responsive and inclusive curriculum within an evaluative state characterized by high stakes testing. Consequently, while government exhortations to ‘raise standards’, ‘innovate’ and ‘promote social inclusion’ clearly serve an important rhetorical function, they may underestimate the challenges involved and overestimate the capacity of schools within disadvantaged areas to ‘make a difference’.     

Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Tour Thesis,Book, or Article.

Underlined by the belief that teachers' critical awareness of their actions is a vital issue in education, this study examines the insights that evolved from a long-term collaboration among seven doctoral students. To prepare for our comprehensive examinations, we collaborated as a study group for one and one-half years. Adopting the dual roles of listener-researcher and narrator-participant, we engaged in dialogue and narrative to convey to each other the meaning of our collaborative experiences. From grounded theory analysis, four elements of collaboration emerged: logistics, social dynamics, empowerment, and change. In order to convey the meaning of our experiences, we create a multiplicity of meanings based on our diverse and lived personal narratives. Finally, our collaborative process challenges academic administrations to examine how well their current policies encourage personal autonomy and cooperative learning approaches for students involved in preparing for their comprehensive examinations.     

The Innovative School: Organization and Instruction

Researchers in the area of educational effectiveness should attempt to develop a new theoretical framework. A critical analysis of the current models of educational effectiveness research is provided and reveals that a dynamic model of effectiveness must: (a) be multilevel in nature, (b) be based on the assumption that the relation of some effectiveness factors with achievement may be curvilinear, (c) illustrate the dimensions upon which the measurement of each effectiveness factor should be based, and (d) define relations among the effectiveness factors. In principle, each factor that refers to the classroom, school, and system, can be measured by taking into account five dimensions: frequency, focus, stage, quality, and differentiation. Examples of measuring effectiveness factors operating at different levels using these 5 dimensions are given. More attention in describing in detail factors associated with teacher behaviour in the classroom is given, since this is seen as the starting point for the development and the testing of the dynamic model. Finally, suggestions for the next steps in the development of other parts of the model are provided.     

Complicity and control in the workplace: a critical case study of TQM,learning, and the management of knowledge

This article analyses how a Total Quality Management process with an embedded workplace literacy programme was implemented in an industrial manufacturing plant. Designed as an insider/outsider team research project, data were collected through interviews with management personnel, education and training providers, and hourly workers. Findings reveal that the Total Quality Management process and the literacy programme were implemented under the guise of providing education and training for workers, but were driven by corporate policy to reduce labour costs. The study also examines the way in which adult education was complicit in controlling workplace knowledge.