Que Luchen por sus Intereses (To Fight for Your Interests): Unearthing Critical Counter-Narratives of Spanish-Speaking Immigrant Parents

This article reports on findings from a year-long research project conducted during the 2012–2013 school year in a PK–12 school district, located in the Mountain West region of the United States, utilizing the Photovoice method. The findings in the project point to the important critical counter-narratives Spanish-speaking immigrant parents present to the larger school community when given the opportunity to have their voices and perspectives heard and recorded in written form. The article provides teachers, counselors, administrators, and support staff in schools and school districts with insight into the hopes and aspirations of Spanish-speaking immigrant parents and highlights educational practices that address issues of equity and access, as seen through the eyes of the participants in the study.     

Banners for Books: “Mighty-Hearted” Kindergartners Take Action through Arts-Based Service Learning

Teaching about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, is one way to support students’ learning about issues of fairness. However, learning about this document is not enough. Students need to have experiences where they explore issues of justice and equity in order to learn about respect and dignity for others. The present study explored an arts-based project in a kindergarten classroom about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 26—The Right to Education. Over the course of several months, nineteen kindergarten students learned about educational inequities around the world and specifically about an under-resourced partner school in El Salvador. Children’s literature about human rights became the catalyst for critical conversations, written responses, and drawings inspiring action. Students worked to address injustice by screen printing images they drew about their beliefs regarding a child’s right to education on fabric banners to raise awareness about school inequity. These banners were then displayed in their school and in the partner school. Overall findings from students’ discussions, writing, illustrations, and interviews indicated that the kindergartners were able to recognize their own rights and educational privilege. Through the project they demonstrated active citizenship centered on care and sought further connections with children at the partner school. In using arts-based service learning, educators involved in the study discovered how art can be used as a creative process and a teaching method to support young learners raising awareness about global inequities.     

Next Generations,Catwalks, Random Walks and Arms Races: conceptualising the development of quality assurance schemes

The emergence and development of quality assurance schemes in European countries over the last 15–20 years has inspired many national case studies of the systems and procedures adopted. The methods, contexts, and procedures associated with this policy change are diverse. But although individual countries have set about changing policy in different ways there appear to be some common developmental patterns within the Europe of the Bologna Process. How can these developments be conceptualised? In a first step this paper advances a typology based on the quality assurance literature. In a second step, the paper applies the typology to quality assurance developments in three countries. The third part of the paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the modelling approach in the light of the empirical evidence and a political science analysis of policy change. The paper concludes with a discussion on future directions for the comparative study of policy change within the European Higher Education Area on the basis of this conceptualisation of developments in quality assurance policy.     

Gender and Management in HEIs: Changing organisational and management structures

This paper reports on the second phase of a multi-country study examining cross cultural perspectives of gender and management in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It examines the broader labour market context and legislative frameworks for higher education in each country and then analyses the literature on women in university management. The paper presents the findings of research with male and female senior managers about their perceptions of women as HEI managers within changing organisational and management structures. It concludes that although HEI’s are now largely aware of barriers to women getting into and on in senior management, they have not addressed the organisational structures and cultures that perpetuate this inequity.

     

The 2000 Cohort of New Assistant Professors of Counselor Education: Year 3

This article is the 3rd in a series that has been focused on the experiences of assistant professors of counselor education who were at the conclusion of their 3rd year in the profession. Thirty‐six participants provided information about their experiences, sources of pleasure and displeasure, professional contributions, areas of change, and expectations for tenure and promotion. Prominent themes that emerged from the data included mentoring, balance and family focus, and scholarship. Recommendations are presented for counselor educators‐in‐training, candidates, new counselor educators (CEs), and veteran CEs.     

Phonological awareness and reading speed deficits in reading disabled Greek‐speaking children

There is evidence that phonological awareness skills secure decoding ability and that phonological deficits underlie failure to acquire adequate word recognition. Slow word‐reading rate may be an additional defining characteristic of reading disability. The present study aimed to investigate whether: (1) reading disabled (RD) Greek‐speaking children showed reading accuracy and reading speed deficits relative to chronological age‐matched controls (CAC) and reading age‐matched controls (RAC); (2) they showed phonological deficits relative to the two control groups who do not present reading difficulties; and (3) they showed reading comprehension deficits over and above any word reading deficits.

Results suggested that the reading accuracy of the RD group was predictably weaker than that of the CAC group but equivalent to that of the RAC group. However, the reading speed of the RD group was significantly slower than the RAC group, who showed the same single word reading speed as the CAC group.

Slow and laboured decoding was found to compromise the reading comprehension of the RD group, whose listening comprehension performance was as good as the two other groups. The RD children performed poorly on phonological awareness tasks and naming speed. Naming speed was not an independent core feature of reading difficulties in the Greek language but was associated with a general phonological deficit.

It is recommended that diagnostic assessments for children with reading difficulties in Greek should include phonological awareness, single word reading and pseudoword reading tasks that measure both accuracy and speed.     

Interdisciplinary collaboration as a prerequisite for inclusive education

This article reports on findings from a research project on interdisciplinary collaboration between mainstream school teachers and special school teachers. The aim of the research project has been to examine the knowledge of special school teachers and how this knowledge can contribute to the development of an inclusive learning environment in mainstream schools. Not as a simple task of transferring knowledge, but as a process of transforming knowledge through interdisciplinary collaboration and co-teaching. The design of the study is inspired by the notion of participation within action research as a research approach. Thus the thick data generated from reflective activities in the study design are analysed within a narrative and practice directed strategy of analysis.