“The fish becomes aware of the water in which it swims”: revealing the power of culture in shaping teaching identity

“The fish becomes aware of the water in which it swims” is a metaphor that represents Yuli’s revelatory journey about the hidden power of culture in her personal identity and professional teaching practice. While engaging in a critical auto/ethnographic inquiry into her lived experience as a science teacher in Indonesian and Australian schools, she came to understand the powerful role of culture in shaping her teaching identity. Yuli realised that she is a product of cultural hybridity resulting from interactions of very different cultures—Javanese, Bimanese, Indonesian and Australian. Traditionally, Javanese and Indonesian cultures do not permit direct criticism of others. This influenced strongly the way she had learned to interact with students and caused her to be very sensitive to others. During this inquiry she learned the value of engaging students in open discourse and overt caring, and came to realise that teachers bringing their own cultures to the classroom can be both a source of power and a problem. In this journey, Yuli came to understand the hegemonic power of culture in her teaching identity, and envisioned how to empower herself as a good teacher educator of pre-service science teachers.     

The Effect of an Analysis-of-Practice,Videocase-Based,Teacher Professional Development Program on Elementary Students' Science Achievement

This article describes the effects of an analysis-of-practice professional development (PD) program on elementary school students' (Grades 4–6) science outcomes. The study design was a cluster-randomized trial with an analysis sample of 77 schools, 144 teachers and 2,823 students. Forty-two schools were randomly assigned to treatment, (88.5 hours) of integrated analysis-of-practice and content deepening PD (over the course of one year) while 35 schools were randomly assigned to receive an equal number of PD hours in science content deepening alone. Students' content knowledge, as measured by a project-specific test, was compared across treatment groups. The effect size for this comparison was 0.52 standard deviations in favor of students whose teachers participated in the PD that included analysis-of-practice. This effect compares favorably to that of other elementary school interventions whose effectiveness was studied with a narrowly focused outcome measure. Analysis of the demographics of the study schools suggests that the treatment effect could be relevant outside the local study context. Implications for future research include tests of mediation for teacher-level outcomes and efficacy tests of specific teaching strategies (intervention subcomponents).     

Toy safety and selection

Toys can be used to promote children's cognitive, physical, motor, language, social, and emotional development. Safety and developmental appropriateness are of the utmost importance when selecting children's toys. Parents and teachers and other helping professionals need to teach children the safe use of toys to prevent toy-related accidents. Obtain additional information regarding toy safety by calling the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission at 1(800)638-CPSC.     

Teacher as Researcher,Teacher as Scholar,and Teacher as Leader

ABSTRACT

Too often, because of the static nature of schools and the dominant existence of high-stakes testing, professional learning for teachers is determined by administrators or policy and is facilitated by those who are not part of the school community using prepackaged programs. These initiatives run counter to authentic teacher inquiry where teachers enhance their understanding of students and learning and, ideally, develop new teaching practices (Borko, 2004; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009; Darling-Hammond, 1997). In this article, we focus on how teachers participating in action research begin to position themselves as teacher leaders.     

A cross-national survey of cultural expectations and sex-role standards in reading

Cultural expectations and sex-role standards about reading in Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, Israel, Japan, and U.S.A. were investigated. A picture test showing various activities and objects including reading and books was administered in each country to six sub-samples that approximated to the levels: students in grades I, IV, VIII, and XII, college students, and adults. Subjects had to ascribe the activity or object as being appropriate for either a boy or a girl. The results were consistent with the hypothesis that cultural expectations and sex-role standards about reading are congruent within one country but that they differ between countries. In particular, boys in Canada and the U.S.A. rapidly learn to perceive reading as a feminine activity, whereas Danish and Japanese males at all ages consistently view reading as acceptable masculine behaviour.     

EMPIRICAL SYNTHESIS OF THE EFFECT OF STANDARD ERROR OF MEASUREMENT ON DECISIONS MADE WITHIN BRIEF EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSES OF READING FLUENCY

Intervention researchers often use curriculum‐based measurement of reading fluency (CBM‐R) with a brief experimental analysis (BEA) to identify an effective intervention for individual students. The current study synthesized data from 22 studies that used CBM‐R data within a BEA by computing the standard error of measure (SEM) for the median data point from the baseline and intervention data. The median CBM‐R score from the intervention that the authors of each study identified as most effective fell within the SEM (68% confidence interval) of the baseline data approximately 30% of the time, but the ranges for the two author‐identified most effective interventions overlapped over 75% of the time. Extended analyses were consistent with the BEA results for approximately three‐fourths of the instances after considering the SEM of the baseline and intervention phases. Using matched passages did not improve the overlap of the ranges, but there was less overlap when the study used three data points per condition. Results emphasize the importance of considering SEM of CBM‐R data when comparing interventions within a BEA. Further implications for practice and future research are included.