PERCEPTIONS OF THE ELDERLY AMONG MINISTERS AND MINISTRY STUDENTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR SEMINARY CURRICULA

The changing age composition of the American population has direct implications for clergy members. Despite older individual's high rates of involvement in religious activities and reliance on members of the clergy, most clergy members, both current and prospective, are not adequately prepared for ministry with older adults. In the present study, 754 ministers and 363 ministry students completed Palmore's Facts on Aging Quiz I to determine their knowledge of the aging process and perceptions of the elderly. The results indicate that both ministers and ministry students are poorly informed about the processes and realities of aging. The main implication of the findings is that seminary curricula and continuing education offerings need to be infused with gerontological content so that members of the clergy can be better prepared for ministry to, and with, older adults.     

Severe punishment of children by staff in Romanian placement centers for school-aged children: Effects of child and institutional characteristics

The objective of this study was to determine whether children's characteristics and/or institutional characteristics were predictors of severe punishments (including beatings) and/or frequency of punishments that children received from staff in Romanian institutions. The data was hierarchical with institutionalized children (N = 1391) nested within 44 institutions, and the measurement of punishments by the staff and frequency of punishments had a binary distribution. Thus, multilevel logistic regression models were used to examine the effects of individual and institutional level variables on reported punishments and to account for the clustering of the children within institutions. Two general patterns of results emerged. First, regarding individual level variables, it was found that: (1) amount of time spent by children in their current institutions had a significant effect on the probability of being punished by staff and the frequency of this punishment; (2) the probability of being punished was higher for boys than for girls; and (3) having no siblings in the institution increased the odds of being punished several times. Second, regarding institutional level variables: (4) being in placement centers for school-aged children with a traditional type of institutional organization increased the odds of severe punishment compared to a familial/mixed type. The results of the present study highlight the importance of understanding the consequences of institutionalization in a broader way, where children not only experienced early severe psychosocial deprivation as documented in other studies, but also high levels of severe punishments administered by institutional staff.     

Troubling literacy: monolingual assumptions,multilingual contexts,and language teacher expertise

The current educational context in many English speaking countries is one where literacy is understood to be essentially monolingual in orientation; that is, an understanding of literacy around a single common language, with the emphasis on identifying universal, normative ‘standards’ and ‘benchmarks’, such as the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy in Australia, the Primary National Strategy in the United Kingdom, and No Child Left Behind in the United States. This paper aims to problematise such assumptions by examining how teachers, themselves, understand “teaching literacy” when their students come to the teaching/learning relationship with a first language other than English. With a focus on teachers working with bilingual and multilingual students in their early stages of acquiring English as a second language (ESL), the study thus acknowledges the increasingly diverse sociolinguistic profile of students in Australia and elsewhere in the varying degrees of communicative competence they bring to the mainstream in their use of ESL. Moreover, it draws on ESL teacher knowledge and expertise which has been identified as increasingly marginalised within mainstream educational discourse. Through case studies of three ESL teachers in the middle years, salient themes around the interrelated notions of literacy as learning, language for literacy and language as literacy were identified with respect to the literacy needs of second language learners.     

CREATING OPTIMAL MATHEMATICS LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: COMBINING ARGUMENTATION AND WRITING TO ENHANCE ACHIEVEMENT

The issue of mathematics underachievement among students has been an increasing international concern over the last few decades. Research suggests that academic success can be achieved by focusing on both the individual and social aspects of learning. Within the area of mathematics education, the development of metacognitive skills and the incorporation of discourse in classroom instruction has resulted in students having deeper conceptual understandings of the content and increased mathematical achievement. However, studies in this field tend to focus on the effects of these practices separately, making research that seeks to harness the potential of both quite rare. This paper reports on a study that was aimed at addressing this gap in the literature by examining the effects of writing and argumentation on achievement. Two hundred and eleven students and five teachers participated in this multimethod study that investigated the effects of three treatment conditions on mathematical achievement. These conditions were writing alone, argumentation alone, and writing and argumentation combined. Analysis of covariance revealed significant differences between the groups, and tests of the contrasts showed that students who engaged in both argumentation and writing had greater knowledge gains than students who engaged in argumentation alone or neither activity.     

Critically Conscious or Dangerously Dysconscious?: An Analysis of Teacher Candidates' Concerns in Urban Schools

Drawing on a teacher concerns framework, alongside notions of critical consciousness, this article examines the extent to which teacher candidates' (TCs') concerns are related in any way to the critical scholarship they have engaged with throughout their teacher education coursework. Utilizing teacher candidates' written dilemmas of practice during student teaching as the primary data source, the authors utilize consensual qualitative research for data analysis and share results within and across concern categories as related to notions of critical consciousness and dysconsciousness (King, 1991). Results indicate that TCs' posted self concerns lacked a critical inward journey; that TCs were more likely to be critically conscious regarding their own positionality in schools, yet overwhelmingly dysconscious when talking about students and families; and that large percentages of dysconscious task concerns seem related to TCs' lack of critically conscious posts about self. The authors suggest the importance of more focused mentorship and assignments aimed at asking questions designed to promote critically conscious ways of being in classrooms, and similarly suggest the importance of considering notions of critical consciousness in concerns-based studies moving forward. The authors end with a note of caution on the movement toward “core practices” in teacher preparation and instead suggest the importance of programming that focuses on uncovering and eradicating dysconsciousness among TCs working with historically marginalized youth.