The Engagement of Transnationals in Mexican University Classrooms: Points of Entry Toward Recognition Among Future English Teachers

For better or worse, English continues to expand as the commonly shared lingua franca throughout the world. With an increasing movement of transnational students—armed with English and flowing across borders—three university professors discuss their pedagogies and ways of knowing as they engage transnational students inside Mexican university classrooms for future teachers of English. Situated at an interior Mexican public university, each of them explores their unique positioning and the ways they taught transnational students. One is a transnational Mexican-American instructor; another is a researcher of transnationalism historically based in the U.S., and the other co-author is a Mexican national who learned English as a second language and has witnessed the rapidly changing population of students in the interior of Mexico. Toward the aim of improving the way transnationals access and experience formal education, they provide recommendations for improving pedagogy and expanding research.     

Information services for primary care: the organizational culture of General Practice and the information needs of partnerships and Primary Care Groups

In a primary-care led National Health Service it is imperative for librarians not only to develop user-centred services for health professionals based in the community but also to facilitate information management within Primary Care Groups. In this article recent research in the field is discussed, and challenges intrinsic to delivering information services to primary care are identified. Drawing on the experience of one Practice Librarian in the Aylesbury area, the importance of organizational culture is considered, along with its implications for making successful approaches to partnerships. Five factors that motivated these practices to contract the services of an independent librarian are identified. The information needs of Primary Care Groups are discussed and the essential characteristics of future service provision are noted.     

A comparison of WISC-R score profiles of students placed in special education and those referred,but not placed

This study investigated the similarity in the pattern of strengths and weakness on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) subtest scores between those students evaluated and placed in special education programs and those students evaluated but not placed in special programs. Subjects were 585 students in grades 1–6 from three county school systems in eastern Kentucky who were referred for evaluation for possible special education placement. A multiple profile analysis using a MANOVA technique was used to test two hypotheses for each of the two profiles created for both study groups. Comparisons also were made between each group in the rank order of the various scores. The findings revealed that the two groups were similar in the pattern of their relative strengths and weaknesses on the WISC-R. Implications of these findings for teaching strategies for the two groups were discussed.     

Teacher knowledge: The relationship between caring and knowing

While everyone acknowledges the importance of the “caring teacher,” little acknowledgment of caring as an issue exists at the level of educational policymaking. This paper presents teacher and researcher stories which describe a teacher's knowledge in practice and argues for recognition of an epistemological role for caring in teaching. The teacher's narratives describe what she knows from caring and being in relationship with her students - her relational knowing (Hollingsworth et al., 1993, 1994)- and how this knowledge alters her pedagogy and the curriculum that is constructed with each student. Caring for the person (Noddings, 1984, 1992) is revealed as central to what the teacher knows. The findings of this research suggest that for the teacher, the relationship between caring and knowing is complex and involves a constant reflective process. In attempting to situate caring within existing theories for teacher knowledge, Elbaz' (1983) structures are found to be too neat and the boundaries too well defined. A construct of teacher knowledge as relational and dynamic is described. This builds upon Lyons' provisional characterization of the epistemological relationship between students and teachers as nested knowing: “that is, students and teachers are considered to have nested, interacting epistemological perspectives” (1990a, p. 162). In this view, knowledge is not limited to what one person knows, but the intersection where the knowing of two persons in-relation overlap and the consequences for student learning (and teacher development) when one of those persons is a teacher.     

Distributed Work Arrangements: A Research Framework

Various distributed work arrangements have been enabled by advances in information system and communication technologies. To date, these new arrangements have met with varying success, and it is unclear what outcomes society, organizations, and individuals expect from such new work settings. Moreover, we do not understand how aspects of the work environment, tasks, employees, management, and technology might interact to result in different outcomes. This article attempts to provide an integrative view of research on distributed work arrangements and provides a framework for exploring the impacts of these arrangements.     

Mapping two new points on the tennis expertise continuum: tactical skills of adult advanced beginners and entry-level professionals during competition

Research examining problem representations of individuals during task performance is advancing our understanding of information processing and expertise in a variety of sports. However, few studies using similar methodology have been conducted on individuals of various competitive standards in one domain in similar contexts. This study examined problem representations of adult advanced beginners and entry-level professionals accessed during singles tennis competition (n = 12). These groups were selected to represent players with performance skills that were different from those studied previously (i.e. adult beginners and varsity players). Immediate recall and planning interviews were conducted between points during singles tennis competition. Players competed within their respective expertise groups. Verbal reports were transcribed verbatim and concepts were scored according to a model of protocol structure. Several multivariate analyses of variance were conducted on rank scores for measures of concept content and structure using the L-statistic. Entry-level professionals exhibited more advanced problem representations than advanced beginners regardless of interview type. These findings together with those of previous research suggest adaptations in long-term memory profiles with increases in performance skills. For example, beginners lacked action plan and current event profiles because they generated goals and reiterated game events during both interviews. Advanced beginners, who had better performance skills than beginners, exhibited rudimentary action plan profiles and deficient current event profiles because they generated and monitored several detailed actions related to the current context during recall interviews and generated only a few goals during planning interviews. In contrast, varsity players and professionals processed tactical information in the current context and beyond denoting the existence of both action plan and current event profiles. Varsity players, with inferior performance skills than professionals, exhibited fewer and less associated tactical concepts than professionals during both interviews.