Cultural Vibrancy: Exploring the Preferences of African American Children Toward Culturally Relevant and Non-Culturally Relevant Lessons

Despite the laudable intent of various educational initiatives in raising the achievement level of all children, limited progress has been made. In an effort to diminish the achievement gap of students of color, some researchers have examined the cultural relevancy of the curriculum in promoting student achievement. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore the preferences of African American children toward culturally relevant and non-culturally relevant lessons, through a six-week series of lessons in an American History classroom. Critical Race Theory and Racial Identity Development provided the theoretical underpinnings of this study. This study takes place in an ethnically diverse high school in Colorado. Culturally relevant lessons were rich in oral traditions, music, historical connections, and a structured culturally relevant field trip. Non-culturally relevant lessons were administered devoid of cultural referents, and utilized the existing curriculum guide. Study results revealed statistically significant findings for African American children’s preferences for culturally relevant lessons. These lessons were found relevant to their culture when administered by a culturally responsive and caring teacher. Recommendations are made for educators and administrators in promoting achievement through culturally relevant lessons and curriculum.     

Circuits of Dominance in Education and Poverty: Control Logic and Counter Narrative

In this article I represented educational narratives from two students who completed college coursework while they were incarcerated in a closed correctional facility in North Carolina. Alongside their narratives, I shared literature that addressed inadequacies in the United States social welfare programs, an absence of a living wage, and whitestream dominance in US public schools and analyzed the narratives of these students’ childhoods. These narratives were situated at the intersections of poverty and illegal work. Often these intersections remain invisible in policy discourse and educational contexts in the high accountability/high stakes testing movement that positions the curriculum, and not the child, as the most important thing in the classroom. Subsequently, I challenged educators and researchers committed to the pursuit of equity to question how the children in our classrooms and youth in our prisons were raced, gendered, and classed, and to engage in careful and layered understandings of our students’ lives.     

Metamorphosis in Two Novels by Melvin Burgess: Denying and Disguising ‘Deviant’ Desire

Melvin Burgess has gained a reputation as an enfant terrible, whose writing tackles topics and presents attitudes which are controversial in literature for adolescents. Kimberley Reynolds cites him as an author whose work demonstrates that “writing about sex, sexuality and relationships between the sexes [is] one of the most radically changed areas in contemporary children’s literature.” Reynolds argues that novels depicting teenage sexuality no longer focus on socialising teenagers into adult-approved behaviours. Yet changes in literature are never fully “radical”; they always build on established traditions. This article examines the ways in which Burgess uses the motif of animal transformation in Tiger Tiger and Lady: My Life as a Bitch to maintain the prevailing view of adolescent carnality as a deviant variation of “proper,” adult sexuality, whilst celebrating early sexual experiences.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Clockwork</Emphasis>: Philip Pullman’s Posthuman Fairy Tale

This article examines the connections between posthumanism and narrative form in Philip Pullman’s Clockwork. Beginning with an account of Pullman’s materialism, it argues that the novel represents consciousness and agency as emergent properties of matter, a position that manifests itself first in the tale’s figurative language and later in the cybernetic inventions of Dr. Kalmenius. As Pullman effaces the boundaries between animate and inanimate, human and non-human, he generates uncanny effects that are best understood in terms of the posthuman condition and narrative modes that reject liberal humanist models of subjectivity. Clockwork’s uncanny elements, metafictive qualities, and distribution of narrative voice across multiple perspectives thus represent narrative accommodations demanded by the tale’s rejection of the Cartesian mind/body dualism that grounds the liberal humanist subject. Clockwork’s acceptance of the posthuman condition is, however, incomplete and anxiety-laden, and the fairy-tale transformation of Prince Florian at the end of the novel represents a partial recuperation of liberal humanist morality.     

Counseling Psychology Licensure in Taiwan: Development,Challenges, and Opportunities

The development and consequences of licensure for counseling psychologists in Taiwan are presented to promote cross-cultural awareness surrounding issues in the counseling psychology profession. The national licensure statute for counseling psychologists in Taiwan was established by the Taiwanese Legislature in 2001. While the licensing system marked an important milestone, it also brought forth a number of internal and external conflicts to the counseling psychology profession in Taiwan. The paper consists of four parts. First, it introduces the development of the Counseling Psychology profession and licensure in Taiwan. Second, challenges triggered by the statute of counseling psychologists are considered. Third, the profession’s strategic response to these challenges is addressed. Finally, the profession’s ongoing post-licensure development is presented. We hope this article facilitates further exchanges of initiatives undertaken by international colleagues to consolidate the ethical practice of the Counseling Psychology profession in different parts of the world.     

Re-thinking support: the hidden school-to-work challenges for individuals with special needs

This paper examines the hidden challenges experienced by individuals with special needs during the transition years between school and work. An assessment framework is proposed that covers domains of difficulties, developmental tasks during the transition years, the matrix of support within the home-community-institutions ecosystems, and the individual’s personal profile of schooling experience, academic attainments, interests, aptitudes and sense of self-determination. The paper ends with a model for intervention addressing self-efficacy and the social cognitive environment of the individual.     

The Dimensions of Common Factors in Counseling

Common factors is a concept that offers an explanation as to what makes counseling effective. Evidence from outcome studies has implications for training and practice. The particular purpose of this paper is to review the components of a popular model of common factors, the evidence supporting them, and subsequent implications for counselor educators and practitioners. The author specifies the parameters of clinical decision-making within the common factors model and discusses the limits of relational factors in counseling.     

The Effects of Different On-line Searching Activities on High School Students’ Cognitive Structures and Informal Reasoning Regarding a Socio-scientific Issue

Learners’ ability in dealing with socio-scientific issues has been highlighted in contemporary science education. This study explored the effects of different on-line searching activities on high school students’ cognitive structure outcomes and informal reasoning outcomes. By using a quasi-experimental research approach, thirty-three students were assigned to a “guided searching task group”, while thirty-five students were assigned to an “unguided searching task group”. The treatments of this study were two different on-line searching activities. All the participants were asked to search relevant information regarding nuclear power usage on the Internet during the period of two classes (100 min). However, the students in the un-guided searching task group were asked to search freely, while those in the guided searching task group were provided with a searching guideline. The participants’ cognitive structures outcomes as well as their informal reasoning outcomes regarding nuclear power usage were assessed before and after the conduct of on-line searching tasks. The results of ANCOVA revealed that the students in the guided on-line searching task group significantly outperformed their counterparts in the extent (p < 0.01) and the richness of their cognitive structures (p < 0.01). Also, they significantly outperformed their counterparts in the usage of the two information processing strategies, “comparing” (p < 0.05) and “inferring or explaining” (p < 0.05). Moreover, it was also found that the students in the guided on-line searching task group only outperformed their counterparts in their supportive argument construction (p < 0.05). In other words, the guided searching tasks did help the students obtain better cognitive structure outcomes; however, the increments on their cognitive structure outcomes may only help them to propose more supportive arguments, but their rebuttal construction (an important indicator for their reasoning quality) was not particularly improved.     

A New Two-Step Approach for Hands-On Teaching of Gene Technology: Effects on Students’ Activities During Experimentation in an Outreach Gene Technology Lab

Emphasis on improving higher level biology education continues. A new two-step approach to the experimental phases within an outreach gene technology lab, derived from cognitive load theory, is presented. We compared our approach using a quasi-experimental design with the conventional one-step mode. The difference consisted of additional focused discussions combined with students writing down their ideas (step one) prior to starting any experimental procedure (step two). We monitored students’ activities during the experimental phases by continuously videotaping 20 work groups within each approach (N = 131). Subsequent classification of students’ activities yielded 10 categories (with well-fitting intra- and inter-observer scores with respect to reliability). Based on the students’ individual time budgets, we evaluated students’ roles during experimentation from their prevalent activities (by independently using two cluster analysis methods). Independently of the approach, two common clusters emerged, which we labeled as ‘all-rounders’ and as ‘passive students’, and two clusters specific to each approach: ‘observers’ as well as ‘high-experimenters’ were identified only within the one-step approach whereas under the two-step conditions ‘managers’ and ‘scribes’ were identified. Potential changes in group-leadership style during experimentation are discussed, and conclusions for optimizing science teaching are drawn.     

Evaluating the reflexive practices in a learning experience

Reflexivity is a primary requirement for professional work. Our aim was to describe a methodology suitable for detecting the development of reflexive practice through the analysis of 59 Master’s degree students’ journals. We explore the use and changes of reflexive practice in relation to the settings and activities of the course using analysis of the mental language: We analyse how the reflexive practice is characterized, how it evolves through time and how it can be promoted. Data analysis shows that reflexivity is not monodimensional but multidimensional. Reflexive practice increases during the course: The different dimensions vary over time according to different organizational and educational conditions. This methodology allows us to formulate new hypotheses about which elements of the setting and process are effective in supporting participants’ reflexive practice.