Understanding Candidates’ Learning Relationships with their Cooperating Teachers: A call to Reframe my Pedagogy

Abstract

This self-study frames the influences of cooperating (or mentor) teachers on teacher candidates in my teacher education classroom as an action-at-a-distance on my pedagogy of teacher education; that is, a tacit set of influences and expectations that teacher candidates develop about my course before it even begins. Interviews with teacher candidates enabled me to develop two conceptual metaphors to think about the relationships candidates develop with cooperating teachers on practicum. The first, freedom with foundation, reflects the fact that teacher candidates hope to have considerable autonomy in their practicum placements while simultaneously having the support from their cooperating teacher to receive meaningful, regular, feedback. The second, power and performance, names the tensions teacher candidates feel in experiencing the practicum as a site of performance rather than as a site of learning. I offer some specific pedagogical ways in which I have responded to these issues before making a turn to self. I examined journal entries from my own experiences as a teacher candidate 20 years ago with a view to understanding the ways in which the two metaphors may have played a role in my own development as a teacher. This research compels me to attend explicitly to action-at-at-distance forces in my teacher education classroom, such as candidates’ relationship with cooperating teachers and my relationships with my former cooperating teachers.     

Wellbeing in schools: Examining the policy–practice nexus

National concern regarding the social and emotional wellbeing of children and young people is now strongly reflected in a wide range of Australian policy initiatives. A considerable number of these target schools and point firmly to the role education is perceived to play in promoting student wellbeing. Given that wellbeing can be difficult to define and complex to measure, closer attention needs to be paid to whether and how the current wellbeing policy environment provides conceptual clarity and intelligible implementation pathways. This article explores some of the current policy ambiguity by drawing on findings from a large-scale, mixed methods study exploring student wellbeing at school. These findings emerged from an extensive analysis of wellbeing-related policy, together with policy-related data from in-depth interviews with teachers and principals. They suggest that approaches to supporting student wellbeing are constrained by an ad hoc policy environment characterised by competing discourses and a consequential lack of clarity regarding how wellbeing is understood and best facilitated within the context of schools. The implications of these findings are discussed with particular attention to the interface between policy and practice with regard to student wellbeing in schools in Australia.     

Describing individual incidents of sexual abuse: a review of research on the effects of multiple sources of information on children’s reports

Objective: For successful prosecution of child sexual abuse, children are often required to provide reports about individual, alleged incidents. Although verbally or mentally rehearsing memory of an incident can strengthen memories, children’s report of individual incidents can also be contaminated when they experience other events related to the individual incidents (e.g., informal interviews, dreams of the incident) and/or when they have similar, repeated experiences of an incident, as in cases of multiple abuse.Method: Research is reviewed on the positive and negative effects of these related experiences on the length, accuracy, and structure of children’s reports of a particular incident.Results: Children’s memories of a particular incident can be strengthened when exposed to information that does not contradict what they have experienced, thus promoting accurate recall and resistance to false, suggestive influences. When the encountered information differs from children’s experiences of the target incident, however, children can become confused between their experiences—they may remember the content but not the source of their experiences.Conclusions: We discuss the implications of this research for interviewing children in sexual abuse investigations and provide a set of research-based recommendations for investigative interviewers.     

Reading and writing to learn science: Achieving scientific literacy

A key step in helping students to achieve scientific literacy is to ensure that each school's curriculum supports students' efforts to learn science meaningfully. Educational researchers play a vital role in this step by providing teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and policy makers with information about the creation of a curriculum that supports scientific literacy. In a scientific literacy curriculum, reading and writing can serve as dynamic vehicles for learning science meaningfully. The task of educational researchers is to show how reading and writing can be used most effectively to support science learning. Much of what is done now in schools is based on teacher intuition—good intuition—but intuition nonetheless. What is needed is school-based research to validate and build upon these intuitions. This article is intended to stimulate research on reading and writing to learn science.     

Stakeholders’ perception of who influences the decision‐making processes in Ontario’s public postsecondary education institutions

This paper reports the findings of a study conducted on stakeholders’ perception of who influences the decision‐making processes in Ontario’s public postsecondary education institutions. The study identified and interviewed representatives of those stakeholder groups that are frequently written about as the main forces behind decision making in colleges and universities. This is a qualitative research study in which four institutions were selected for case studies. The findings suggest that administrations are the most influential, and faculty unions/associations are the least influential in Ontario’s (Canada’s second largest and most populated province) public colleges and universities. It is concluded that those in central positions with access to information from all levels, and who are in close proximity to the gatekeepers of the institutions, will dominate the decision‐making processes in postsecondary education institutions. They will be the generators and harvesters of ideas and implementers of decisions.     

Uncovering Hidden Histories: Evaluating Preservice Teachers’ (PST) Understanding of Local Indigenous Perspectives in History Via Digital Storytelling at Australia’s Sovereign Hill

Non-Indigenous-led organizations and education programs have long been criticized for sanitized teachings of Aboriginal perspectives in history, while scholarship touts the transformative benefits offered up via decolonial and immersive pedagogical approaches. In this case study, we explore the impact of a cross-cultural venture, titled Hidden Histories: The Wadawurrung People, between a living history museum, the local Aboriginal community, and a regional university on teacher preparedness to incorporate Aboriginal perspectives in history curricula. Through a cultural interface lens, we examine the ontological and epistemological developments of 112 preservice teachers postinteraction with an intercultural digital-kinaesthetic education tool. Our findings suggest that PSTs enjoy engaging with the tool, yet while on site, they prefer to immerse themselves in the museum environment. Our findings indicate also, however, that the tool is an accessible cross-cultural predatory tool that encourages a lifelong commitment to integrating Aboriginal perspectives in history curricula.     

Seeking Diversity in Mathematics Education: Mathematical Modeling in the Practice of Biologists and Mathematicians

Although reform efforts in mathematics education have called for more diverse views of mathematics, there have been few studies of how mathematics is used and takes form in practices outside of mathematics itself. Thus legitimate diverse models have largely been missing in education. This study attempts to broaden our understanding of mathematics by investigating how applied mathematicians and biologists, working together to construct dynamic population models, understand these models within the framework of their perspective practices, that is how these models take on a role as 'boundary objects' between the two practices. By coming to understand how these models function within the practice of biology, the paper suggests that mathematics educators have the opportunity both to reevaluate their own assumptions about modeling and to build an understanding of the dialectic process necessary for these models to develop an epistemological basis that is shared across practices. Investigating this dialectic process is both important and missing in most mathematical classrooms.1     

Grades,learning, and student evaluation of instruction

In the first experiment, the author employed three different grading standards, identified as stringent, moderate, and lenient, in separate sections of the course Psychology of Learning. Other aspects of the course were the same for each section. The different grading standards resulted in substantially different grade distributions in the anticipated direction. Evaluations of both the instructor's performance and the couse decreased as the stringency of the grading criteria increased. Every item on the evaluation questionnaire was systematically influenced by the grading criteria. The amount learned, as measured by performance on the objective part of the final test, increased as the stringency of the grading criteria increased. In the second experiment, the subjects were the students in two sections of the course Introductory Psychology, taught by the author during the same term. The same textbook, course notes, and grading criteria were employed. The manipulated variable was test frequency, with the two sections receiving either weekly or biweekly tests. Students in the section receiving weekly tests scored 11.9% higher, on the average, over all tests. This resulted in a substantial difference in grade distributions. The ratings of the section receiving lower grades were substantially lower on every item of the rating form. Students appear to rate instructors on the basis of a global impression (liking) which they form, which is strongly influenced by the grade the student receives.     

The effect of event repetition on the production of story grammar in children's event narratives

Objective

This study examined the effect of event repetition on the amount and nature of story-grammar produced by children when recalling the event.

Method

Children aged 4 years (N = 50) and 7 years (N = 56) participated in either 1 or 6 occurrences of a highly similar event where details varied across the occurrences. Half the children in each age and event group recalled the last/single occurrence 5-6 days later and the other half recalled the last/single occurrence after 5-6 weeks (the final and single occurrence was the same). Children's free recall responses were classified according to the number and proportion of story-grammar elements (Stein &; Glenn, 1979—setting, initiating event, internal response, plan, attempt, direct consequence, and resolution) as well as the prevalence of causal links between the individual story-grammar elements.

Results

More story-grammar detail and more links between individual story-grammar elements were reported about the final compared to single occurrence. The amount of story-grammar increased with age and decreased over time. Further, an interaction was revealed such that the effect of retention interval on the production of story-grammar was negligible for older children who experienced the repeated event.

Conclusions

Event repetition has a beneficial effect on the production of children's story-grammar content in situations where event details varied from occasion to occasion. This study highlights the importance of eliciting free recall when conducting evidential interviews with child witnesses about repeated events.     

Institutionalized biases in the award of research grants: a preliminary analysis revisiting the principle of accumulative advantage

Accumulative advantage in the research system may allow elite groups to secure a disproportionate share of resources. Using grant submissions data to a UK Research Council, associations between success in securing grants and potential sources of advantage are explored, including membership of the peer review cadre, departmental standing, track record, gender and ethnicity. Success in securing grants is associated with several potential sources of advantage, suggesting that factors other than the quality of the research proposed influence outcomes. Differential access to these may contribute to the observed biases in the number of grants won against women and non-white groups.