International Counseling Traits: Identifying Counseling Traits Ranked most Important by International Counseling Professionals through Q-Sort Analysis

Research has shown an increase in the study and discussion of international counseling throughout the past decade in the mental health domain. The counseling profession continues to take steps to address the lack of access to and the quality of counseling support throughout the world. A Q-sort methodology was utilized in order to capture an understanding of what might be identified as the most important traits for counselors to consider when counseling in international settings. A uniquely constructed Q-sort model developed from a careful review of the literature resulted in 35 items that were evaluated by 43 participants in two phases of analysis. The results from the Q-sort led to fuller consideration of the 12 counseling traits ranked highest. Three core themes that emerged from the data included: valuing people, personal character, and multicultural intentionality. Discussion about the highest ranked traits and core themes provides consideration of research implications and future studies in international counseling as a whole.     

Teachers' Views about What to do about Sustainable Development

In its various guises the political and economic implications of the spectrum of ideas labelled ‘sustainable development’ have been widely discussed in the media. This research engaged secondary school teachers in the debate concerning the implications for education of the concept of sustainable development. Underpinning this pilot research project is the assumption that teachers, as generally informed citizens, have been sensitised to some of the issues raised in the public domain. Teachers in both the USA and Scotland were interviewed to ascertain the extent to which they had begun to make connections between what they have heard and read informally about sustainable development and their responsibilities as teachers. The objective of this research was to determine the impact of this informal ‘environmental’ education on teaching practice.     

Social‐emotional well‐being and resilience of children in early childhood settings – PERIK: an empirically based observation scale for practitioners

Compared with the traditional focus on developmental problems, research on positive development is relatively new. Empirical research in children's well‐being has been scarce. The aim of this study was to develop a theoretically and empirically based instrument for practitioners to observe and assess preschool children's well‐being in early childhood settings. The analysis of preschool teachers' ratings yields six dimensions of social‐emotional well‐being: (1) making contact/social performance, (2) self control/thoughtfulness, (3) self‐assertiveness, (4) emotional stability/coping with stress, (5) task orientation, (6) pleasure in exploration. Composite scales were constructed. PERIK consists of six scales of six items each. The scales differentiate in both the upper and lower range and despite their brevity have good psychometric qualities. The instrument was published together with a booklet containing examples of how PERIK observations can be employed in practical work with children.     

Mediating Peer Teaching for Learning Games: An Action Research Intervention Across Three Consecutive Sport Education Seasons

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to provide an integrated analysis of a teacher’s peer-teaching mediation strategies, the student-coaches’ instruction, and the students’ gameplay development across 3 consecutive seasons of sport education. Method: Twenty-six 7th-grade students participated in 3 consecutive sport education seasons of invasion games (basketball, handball, and soccer). The research involved 3 action research cycles, 1 per season, and each cycle included the processes of planning, acting and monitoring, reflecting, and fact finding. Data collection consisted of videotape and audiotape records of all 47 lessons, a reflective field diary kept by the first author in the role of teacher-researcher, and a total of 24 semistructured focus-group interviews. Trustworthiness criteria for assuring the quality of qualitative research included extensive data triangulation, stakeholders’ crosschecking, and collaborative interpretational analysis. Results: Through the application of systematic preparation strategies, student-coaches were able to successfully conduct team instruction that resulted in students’ tactical development and improved performance. Aspects such as the study of predominant configurations of players’ gameplay and similar tactical principles across games within the same category prevented a setback in the complexity of the learning content addressed at the beginning of each season. Players also showed an increasing ability to adapt gameplay to game conditions. Conclusions: While sport education has the capacity to develop competent players, different levels of teacher guidance and learners’ instructional responsibility are necessary when teaching tactics.     

Video‐taped lectures for honours students on international Industry Based Learning

For a course built around a year of Industry Based Learning (IBL), devising an honours stream within the same four‐year time span required part‐time study during IBL. In the case of students undertaking IBL internationally, this neccessitated the provision of units of study for distance learning. However, in some units appropriate learning resources were not in existence. The solution to this problem was to video‐tape a chemistry lecture unit live.

This led to a second potential problem. Was the video‐taped lecture unit a suitable learning resource? Hence the unit was trialled on local students. After live lectures or independent video‐tape learning, students' results on an identical examination were internally standardised to their overall performance. These standardised results showed clear‐cut improvements when video‐taped lectures were utilised. Thus, for a (special) group of students studying chemistry at a distance, the generalised results of the trial suggest the telelecture mode of presentation to be a highly desirable alternative.

Biochemistry majors responded much more positively to the stimulus of the novel method of presentation (in their second, chemistry major) than the double major chemistry students. There is a clear general implication here for teachers of students in non‐preferred or service areas, whether at a distance or not.     

When does an opportunity become an opportunity? Unpacking classroom practice through the lens of ecological psychology

Drawing on ecological psychology, this paper considers how student engagement is an accomplishment of the classroom system. Specifically, this paper presents an analysis of two teachers and their students who were using a project-based unit in their mathematics classes. The two teachers used identical curricular materials, but had dramatically different personal histories of teaching and different instructional practices. Our goal is to investigate the role of the teacher in supporting student engagement by considering the kinds of opportunities to learn that were presented by the teacher, and the relationship between those opportunities to learn and the ways their students engaged. Pragmatically, this paper contributes to our understanding of how teachers’ framing of activity significantly impacts the ways that students are likely to engage tasks. Theoretically, this paper highlights the interactional nature of learning, with the goal of clarifying why learning is not simply an individual accomplishment.     

Elementary Teachers’ Beliefs About Teaching Science and Classroom Practice: An Examination of Pre/Post NCLB Testing in Science

The impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandated state science assessment on elementary teachers’ beliefs about teaching science and their classroom practice is relatively unknown. For many years, the teaching of science has been minimized in elementary schools in favor of more emphasis on reading and mathematics. This study examines the dynamics of bringing science to the forefront of assessment in elementary schools and the resulting teacher belief and instructional shifts that take place in response to NCLB. Results indicated that teachers’ beliefs about teaching science remained unchanged despite policy changes mandated in NCLB. Teacher beliefs related to their perceptions of what their administrators and peer groups’ think they should be doing influenced their practice the most. Most teachers reported positive feelings and attitudes about science and reported that their students had positive feelings and attitudes about science; however, teachers reported teaching science less as a result of NCLB. Implications for elementary science education reform and policy are discussed.     

Other-regulation in collaborative groups: implications for regulation quality

The current study examines variation in other-regulation, conceptualized as efforts by one student to regulate their group’s work. This study extends research which has conceptualized other-regulation as temporarily guiding others’ conceptual understanding and skill development by broadening the spectrum of other-regulation to include directive forms and considering their differential impact on regulation quality. Qualitative analyses were conducted based on videotaped observations of three groups of 7th graders working on three collaborative activities during an inquiry-based science unit. Findings suggest that directive other-regulation related to employed moderate-low and low quality regulation within the group. Facilitative forms yielded higher quality regulation given co-equal regulation and task contributions, the focus of the other-regulator on integrating ideas using behavioral and group process regulation, as well as sustaining a shared focus on developing the task product through the use of high-quality content and disciplinary regulation. In contrast, directive other-regulation related to an imbalance in participation and regulatory contributions, as well as the other-regulators’ focus on controlling the task and ensuring their own contribution remained central to the task product. When group members do not have opportunities to make regulatory contributions, regulation and task quality suffer since the group cannot benefit from the full potential of their shared activity, with implications for learning.