School-wide Positive Behavior Support: Addressing Behavior Problems that Impede Student Learning

The school-wide application of positive behavior support (PBS) is a prevention-oriented approach to student discipline that is characterized by its focus on defining and teaching behavioral expectations, rewarding appropriate behaviors, continual evaluation of its effectiveness, and the integration of supports for individuals, groups, the school as a whole, and school/family/community partnerships. Although school-wide PBS has been implemented in hundreds of schools thus far, many professionals in education and psychology remain, for the most part, unfamiliar with this proactive alternative for increasing positive student behavior. This article reviews the foundations and core components of school-wide PBS, provides a case example of the implementation and preliminary evaluation of school-wide PBS in an urban middle school, and summarizes critical issues and future research directions in this area of considerable importance to professionals in educational psychology and related fields.     

Drawing on the Wrong Side of the Brain: an Art Teacher's Case for Recognising NLD

Secondary art teachers sometimes agonise over students who struggle, but are frustrated by the general failure of the special educational needs system to recognise such problems as worthy of intervention or as more widely significant. Until recently, any analyses of such learning difficulties have found no support in educational psychology. This paper argues for the usefulness of the profile of ‘non‐verbal learning disorders’ (NLD), which recognises visual‐spatial problems associated with the right brain hemisphere. This diagnosis remains controversial and is unrecognised in the UK. The paper looks at examples of work by a student of high academic ability that seem to bear out this profile, discusses them in relation to ‘right brain’ approaches to drawing, and briefly examines some of the positive and far‐reaching implications for art teachers of the growing recognition of NLD.     

The practice and products of communication inquiry and education

Communication is described as a discipline with an obligation to pursue any inquiry that will shed light on the process of life forces attempting a common union. A holistic perspective is cited as necessary to deal with the complexity and ambiguity this approach embodies: an approach that requires a recognition of both the art and the science of human communication. The ability to communicate effectively is termed fundamental for communication education. Consequently, for internal validity, both knowledge‐building and skills‐training are called for in the teaching of communication. For external validity, the discipline must strive to establish common understandings of its work and to send clear messages about the findings to those outside the field.     

The Good,the Bad,and the Ugly of Pedagogy in Harry Potter: An Inquiry Into the Personal Practical Knowledge of Remus Lupin,Rubeus Hagrid,and Severus Snape

On the 20th anniversary of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, we examine the narratives of pedagogical practice of three teachers at “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”. By drawing on these characters’ stories of teaching as presented in Rowling’s novels, we foreground their personal practical knowledge and the relationship of this knowledge to their curriculum-making. We do this in order to highlight the importance of narrative perspective and context in the assessment and evaluation of teachers’ pedagogical practice.     

Science Teacher Attitudes Toward Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this study was to determine teachers’ attitudes, values, and beliefs about inquiry. The participants of this study were 275 middle grade and secondary science teachers from four districts in North Carolina. Issues such as class size, accountability, curricular demands, and administrative support are perceived as constraints, impeding the use of inquiry. These are the issues that must be effectively dealt with in the professional education and professional development of all science teachers.