Licensing procedures, teacher effectiveness and reasonable expectations

Research has found differences in students?? abilities, attitudes, and family and community background to be the largest source of variation in student learning, but these are difficult for policymakers to influence, at least in the short run. However, the single most significant school variable affecting student achievement is ??teacher quality??, and this is potentially open to policy influence. After giving an overview over teacher qualification requirements in the UK, the USA, France, New Zealand and a few other countries, this paper addresses the rationale of licensing examinations. It then considers the possible consequences of implementing them in a country such as Israel, which has recently been contemplating teacher training and licensing as part of a wider educational reform.     

Adolescents from disadvantaged neighborhoods: Personal characteristics as related to volunteer involvement

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationships between involvement in volunteer activities of youth from disadvantaged neighborhoods and their life aspirations: the intensity of their remembered positive experiences: and their sense of coherence (SOC). Scales measuring these factors were administered to three groups of adolescents from disadvantaged neighborhoods: a) 57 adolescents who had been active volunteers during the course of one year, b) 37 adolescents who had merely registered to become involved but had not yet begun their activity, and c) 42 adolescents who were not involved in any volunteer activity. A cross-sectional design was selected to compare the three groups. The results showed that adolescents who had been involved in such activities for a period of at least one year expressed a stronger sense of coherence in their lives, a higher desire to commit of themselves to society, and a greater capacity to experience more intense positive experiences, in comparison to the other two groups of their noninvolved peers. The potential significance of volunteer activity for disadvantated adolescents was explored, and suggestions were offered for new directions in social rehabilitation programs.The authors would like to thank Dee B. Ankonina for her editorial assistance.     

Social Competencies and Difficulties of Gifted Children Compared to Nongifted Peers

This study, conducted in Israel, examined the social and emotional difficulties of gifted children, in comparison with nongifted children. The gifted children were further compared in two educational settings: segregated classes and pull-out programs. The 974 participants were from the fifth to twelfth grades. The dependent variables included loneliness, social competence, empathy, and self-concept. The results indicated that gifted children score higher on need fulfillment, empathy, academic self-concept, and lack of emotional anxiety and lower on self-disclosure and physical self-concept. Few differences were found between the two settings for gifted children. The conclusion is that gifted children differ from nongifted children only on some of the social–emotional variables examined, mainly for the better.     

Resisting the sirens of temptation while studying: Using reappraisal to increase focus,enthusiasm, and performance

One of the major obstacles in the learning process is temptation, which has the power to divert students from even their most important goals (e.g. getting a degree). In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that cognitive reappraisal could be used to successfully resist temptation. Participants had to memorize tedious material while being tempted by pictures pasted on the wall (Study 1) or by funny clips on the television (Study 2). In Study 1, compared to a control group, participants who were instructed to reappraise the task as an opportunity to improve their memory (1) were less tempted by the pictures, (2) maintained their enthusiasm for the task, and (3) showed better performance in a subsequent memory test. Study 2 replicated and extended the findings from Study 1, showing that cognitive reappraisal is effective whether the target of reappraisal is the temptation itself, or the longer term goal. Taken together, our findings provide compelling evidence that cognitive reappraisal (of either the task or the temptation) may be a useful tool for increasing students' task performance and enthusiasm.     

Selecting Candidates for Teachers’ Training College: a group assessment procedure as an alternative to individual interviews

An effective interview for the purpose of selecting potential teachers requires meeting several essential criteria which most interviews conducted in such settings fail to do. Moreover, an entire area of interpersonal skills is less effectively determined by the individual interview. The group assessment procedure proved valid for predicting teaching success in this study and appears far more effective than the individual interview used in the same setting.

This paper focuses on the need to improve the existing individual interviews for purposes of teacher selection, although many of its deficiencies are inevitable under the conditions of teacher‐candidate admission procedures. But even then, the group procedure appears to be a better alternative because those personality factors most related to teacher success, are more effectively assessed through group methods.     

Validation of the Democratic Teacher Belief Scale (DTBS)

Democratic beliefs in education are important in a pluralistic society, where teachers must be prepared to make professional decisions about how best to meet the educational needs of all students. The purpose of this study was to validate the Democratic Teacher Belief Scale (DTBS). The scale is composed of 34 items relating to the three central principles in democracy--equality, freedom, and justice--as they are manifested in classroom life. Results indicated high internal consistency, significant contrasted group validity, and significant criterion validity (correlation with the Classroom Coping Strategies Scale and with principal evaluation of teaching success). These results have important implications for the measurement of teacher beliefs, as well as for practice in teacher training.     

Stigma of school counselling among Israeli adolescents as a function of ethnicity,counselling orientation and contact frequency

The stigma of counselling frequently affects those groups who need it most. This has certainly been the case in junior high schools in Israel. The research focused on the attitudes toward counselling of 2296 Israeli adolescents. Data analysis showed that students of Asian-African origin (Oriental) who occupy a lower socio-economic stratum, feel more stigmatized by counselling than their European-American origin (Ashkenasic) counterparts, even though they appreciate it more. Both groups experienced less stigma when the counselling service was hybridized with normative functions. Moreover, expanding the frequency of contact with the counsellor was found to increase rather than eliminate vulnerability to stigma among the Oriental students, thus suggesting that varying the nature, and therefore the perception, of the service is a more productive approach.