The Role of the Year Leader: an Analysis of the Perceptions of Year Leaders and Deputy Heads in 8‐12 Middle Schools

Today's school leaders are searching for a way to give value to and effectively manage a school's intangible assets to create a more holistic picture of student success. Schools establish partnerships with community organizations towards this end and to ultimately impact student learning. Utilizing the framework of principals as knowledge managers, this paper describes how school principals involved in a university partnership developed a tool to manage and intentionally utilize the intangible assets of the school–university partnership to increase student learning. Included are examples of how the tool was applied and suggestions for adapting the tool to any school partnership.     

Effects of a Classroom Management Intervention on Student Achievement in Inner‐City Elementary Schools

ABSTRACT

As part of a study of the life‐cycle of inner‐city schools, the achievement of elementary school students (on MAT6 and TEAMS tests) who had teachers trained in a classroom management program in one school were compared with students in a comparison school during a four‐year period. Students at Madison Elementary School showed statistically greater achievement gains on both nationally normed achievement tests (MAT6) and on state criterion‐referenced achievement battery than students at the comparison school in each of three years. The overall effect size due to program treatment on the MAT6 test scores was large, ranging from .43 (1986–87) and .83 (1987–88) during intervention to .73 (1988–89) after intervention. Similar results were found in the TEAMS test associated with the program intervention with overall effect size of 1.02 (1987–88) and .78 (1988–89) in mathematics, .68 and .77 in reading, and .59 and .77 in writing for the respective years. On measures of learning environment, in a post hoc analysis (1990–91), students at Madison perceived their environment to be significantly more positive than comparison students. Teacher and principal interviews during and after the intervention periods provided contextual guidance for the findings.     

Clapping with two hands: Bringing together local and outside knowledge for innovation in land husbandry in Tanzania and Ethiopia ‐ a comparative case study

Abstract

Promoting rural development in Africa involves learning to clap with two hands, that is to say, creating effective interaction between local knowledge and development initiatives, on the one hand, and the knowledge and initiatives of formal agricultural research and extension, on the other. Farmer innovators ‐men and women farmers who take their own initiative to change local agriculture ‐ are key allies in rural development, as shown by the experience of the ISWC programme in Africa. Focusing on Ethiopia and Tanzania, the authors describe how formal research and extension services are made aware of farmers’ innovative work and are encouraged to document the results, promote their spread, and support further development efforts by farmer innovators. A modified Participatory Technology Development (PTD) approach is thus emerging, which starts not with problem analysis but rather by linking up with local problem‐solving initiatives. While the learning process on this approach continues, dialogue has been initiated with policy‐makers with a view to incorporating the approach into regular government extension, research and training activities.     

Imagining a different life in school: educating student teachers about ‘looked after’ children and young people

The research described in this paper concerns the acquaintance of student teachers with the educational and wider pastoral experiences of children and young people who are or have been ‘looked after’ and who they may well teach at some point, together with the familiarisation of student teachers with the ‘looked after’ system in the UK. We discuss an exploratory awareness‐raising curriculum project within a Teacher Education Department at a University in the UK that utilises digital multimedia to develop a ‘community of awareness’ of young people and student teachers. As a result of this work, the student teachers were able to reflect on their pedagogical knowledge and practices related to teaching and wider pupil pastoral care. Further, those involved in the project therefore not only learned how to use technology, but to apply it in meaningful, productive ways, which were potentially transforming in terms of appreciation and knowledge of diversity. Benefits for the participants – the young people involved and the student teachers, as well as implications for both student teachers’ understanding of diversity and limitations of the technology – are discussed.     

Changing literacies,changing formations: the role of elicitation in teacher action research with new technologies

As new technologies promise to be an enduring feature of the landscape of teachers’ work, we consider how teachers implicitly bring stories forward into their classroom explorations with new media as a part of their ‘informal learning’. By ‘stories’ is meant specific classroom texts as well as preferred teacher practices with those texts. The article represents a reflection on the methodological role that ‘elicitation’ can play in drawing out teacher thinking during a time of professional change, thinking that would otherwise likely remain embedded, particularly when teachers’ attention is focused forward on innovation in practice. The methodological use of ‘elicitation’ emerged in the first year of an ongoing teacher action research study, in which seven teachers have been involved in a professional development initiative that actively engages teachers in examining changing literacy formations, beginning with the teachers’ own literacy formations. The methodological practice of elicitation borrows from phenomenology, ethnomethodology, narrative research, reader response theories, curriculum theory and psychoanalysis, and emerged as a way to acknowledge the life histories that teachers were bringing to their professional development with new media. We suggest that elicitation can potentially draw out deep and sustaining sources of a teacher’s commitment, as well as resistance, to change. It can help disclose the tensions between commitment and resistance that even teachers who voluntarily undertake to incorporate new technologies into their practice may experience. Within a teacher action research framework, elicitation can also serve to remind teachers (and others) of the value of what they know and are learning, thus contributing to teachers developing a ‘scholarship of practice’ in response to any actual or perceived ‘intensification’ of their work.     

How Will They Understand if We Don’t Teach Them? The Status of Criminal Justice Education on Gay and Lesbian Issues

Inclusion of race and gender in criminal justice education has, to some degree, been prompted as a result of perceived bias by criminal justice system professionals. Utilizing the race and gender experience as a template, interactions between the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) community and the criminal justice system are explored. This study surveyed criminal justice undergraduate degree programs to ascertain course content on gay and lesbian issues. Results indicate that an extremely small number of programs have such a course or alternatively incorporate GLBT issues within existing race and gender courses. Implications for criminal justice education are discussed.     

Model Switching in a Learning Environment based on Multiple Models

The introduction of qualitative modelling techniques into learning environments, and intelligent training systems, requires not just the development of tools and techniques for modelling and simulation but also some guidance on how to use qualitative models in learning environments. This paper describes the rationale behind the design of a simulation based learning environment, the Model Switching PROcess rig Demonstration System (MS‐PRODS). Three qualitative and three quantitative simulations of the behavior of the physical system have been implemented using the ITSIE tools (Scott et al, 1990). The design of the learning environment is presented from the point of view of instruction and how the models are to be used to promote learning, in particular examining the model switching mechanism. This mechanism determines how to select and sequence the presentation of models to the learner during guided explorations of the domain. A knowledge based an alysis of the domain knowledge is combined with principles derived from Cognitive Flexibility Theory (Spiro 6 Jehng, 1990) to produce a generic design for a learning environment based on multiple models. The design and implementation of the learning environment is illustrated and a sample sequence of models presented. Finally, related work such as White & Frederiksen (1990) on model progression is discussed.     

An Evaluation of a Pilot Service‐Learning Course for Criminal Justice Undergraduate Students*

This article focuses on a pilot service‐learning program implemented with undergraduate students enrolled in a juvenile delinquency course. An evaluation of the service‐learning program on students’ attitudes toward diversity, interpersonal skills, personal and intellectual development, and citizenship behavior using qualitative analysis is presented. The results indicate that the majority of students came to view the youth in a positive light, reported learning how to work with youth, experienced a reduction in stereotypes, gained career insights, learned how to apply academic theory to real‐life experiences and developed attitudes about how society addresses delinquency that were sympathetic to the youths’ condition.