Elementary school mathematics teachers’ perception of their professional needs

This study explored Israeli elementary school mathematics teachers’ perceptions of their professional needs, with the purpose of developing in-service training courses which cater to these needs. Eighty-four teachers responded to the questionnaire and were interviewed. The results indicate that the respondents’ main needs are associated with strengthening their didactical knowledge capability of dealing with emotional aspects that relate to pupils’ learning of mathematics. Although most of the respondents lack formal mathematics education, they attribute less importance to their need to enhance knowledge in the field. In light of Israeli pupils’ relatively low attainments in mathematics, the authors believe that the education system should require teachers to expand their mathematics knowledge and that only teachers with appropriate knowledge will be permitted to teach the discipline.     

ISTE standards in teacher education: A collection of practical examples

Abstract

The innovative integration of technology into teacher education is at a premium. Institutions, large and small, are searching for examples of appropriate, effective, and replicable programs on which to base programmatic decisions. This article provides such a guide. The authors represent four of the first six International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Distinguished Achievement award‐winning programs. This article provides examples of how four highly innovative programs meet the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS?T) for technology integration into the teacher education programs. It provides a collection of practical examples of ways in which teacher education programs can use the NETS'T as a guide for enhancing teacher education curricula on campus and in P‐12 classrooms where teacher education candidates work.     

Early Educators’ Collective Workplace Stress as a Predictor of Professional Development’s Impacts on Children’s Development

Although professional development is widely used to improve the impacts of early childhood education, little is known about the conditions under which such interventions promote child outcomes. This study applies newly developed methods for quantifying intervention impact heterogeneity to understand whether educators’ collective workplace stress moderates professional development’s impacts on children’s language and literacy skills, executive functioning, and learning behaviors. Within a sample of 406 children from the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education Professional Development Study (M_age = 4.17; 50% female; 50% Black, 32% Latinx, 11% White), professional development positively impacted child outcomes in centers where educators collectively reported high workplace stress but negatively impacted child outcomes in centers where educators collectively reported low workplace stress.     

Patterns of school readiness forecast achievement and socioemotional development at the end of elementary school

A person-oriented approach examined patterns of functioning in social and executive function domains at 54 months and in turn forecasted 5th-grade socioemotional and achievement outcomes for 944 children. Six distinct profiles of 54-month school readiness patterns predicted outcomes in 5th grade with indications of cross-domain association between 54-month performance and later functioning. A group of children at 54 months characterized by low working memory exhibited elevated levels of socioemotional problems and low achievement in 5th grade. Patterns in which high social competence or high working memory were prominent predicted high 5th-grade achievement. Unexpectedly, a group distinguished by attention problems performed well on later achievement outcomes. After controlling for children's early demographics, readiness profiles accounted for math achievement in 5th grade.     

Teaching Specialized Legal Research: Business Associations

Business associations are a complex substantive topic that can be included in an advanced legal research course that teaches students sophisticated research, writing, and citation skills. This article presents the basic substantive law regarding business associations necessary to deliver instruction about advanced legal research, writing, and citation. This article also offers a model syllabus with suggested sources and assignments for students. These research assignments require students to perform tasks such as citing primary and secondary sources, learning advanced research skills using loose-leaf materials, assimilating information from multiple sources into cogent narratives, locating information using various electronic resources, digests, and other secondary sources, and locating and using forms pertinent to business association agreements. This article also provides an instructor with twenty-five suggested sources to use in assigning materials to students. These sources consist of both print and electronic versions. They additionally consist of treatises, monographs, guides, model statutory materials, electronic databases, Web sites, form guides, casebooks, a digest, and a citation manual.     

Transnational academic mobility,knowledge, and identity capital

This article begins with the contemporary context of transnational academic mobility, and sketches a typology of mobile academics according to their self-identification. UK examples are offered as the main case study here. The article will then explore the relations of mobile academics and their embodied and encultured knowledge. It employs a concept of ‘transnational identity capital’ to discuss the position of transnational mobile academic intellectuals as a ‘stranger’ as inspired by Simmel's sociology of space.     

Creating urban classroom communities worthy of trust

Developing trusting relationships between teachers and students in urban secondary schools everywhere is a challenging task that is essential to maintaining an effective learning environment. Trust involves a fragile web of relationships nurtured through positive daily interactions. We examined strategies that US urban high school teachers used to encourage hard-to-teach students to comply with school and class rules and engage in learning. Based on recommendations of these alienated students, we interviewed 18 teachers and observed four of their classes regularly for 4 months. We examine themes supporting an emerging theoretical framework of educational trust. Teachers encouraged their marginalized students to participate in learning by creating a curriculum and class environment that permitted many opportunities for engagement, provided positive interactions, encouraged the development of shared curriculum, and fostered student ownership. These features provided the foundation for educational trust based on themes of shared expectations, persistence, commitment, and voice.     

Reviews

This paper reports findings from an enthographic study of educational restructuring in an Institute of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in Victoria Australia. Educational restructuring is analysed as a process of institutional redesign and theorized in relation to recent debates in institutional theory concerning the nature of institutional change. The review distinguishes between hyperrational approaches to institutional redesign based upon assumptions about rational actors and their motivations and behaviours, and social and cultural perspectives on institutional redesign that sees purposeful institutional change achieved through processes of ‘institutional gardening’. The paper documents the way Australian governments have adopted hyperrational strategies aimed at changing education and training by reworking institutional rules that frame the day-to-day practices within particular organizations. Reworking these practices of organizing serves to steer change by restructuring and rearticulating relationships, practices and centres of power within organizations. Data drawn from interviews with the TAFE Institute Director, and various managers and teachers are used to track the effects of government steering in the TAFE Institute. This analysis shows that government steering drives management steering in the TAFE Institute, creating new imperatives and work organization. These organizational changes are influenced by local conditions and management priorities. They also call forth counter-steering by teachers and managers as they attempt to deal with change. The paper suggests that hyperrational government steering drives towards probable educational futures but is also interrupted by counter-steering oriented to other values and priorities. While there are probable futures, there are also preferred futures to be willed for and worked for.     

Changing boundaries—Shifting identities: Strategic interventions to enhance the future of educational research in Australia

This paper reflects on the geography of Australian educational research in the context of the ERA 2010 and 2012 assessments results. These results reflect significant changes to the nature of educational research over the past decades, where this research is conducted and by whom. We recap the historical changes to the formation of educational institutions and their impact on research outputs to demonstrate that interdisciplinary work is growing in a context where there has been a shift in research outputs away from the traditional area of school education. The ERA results demonstrate a high level of research activity in the intersections between previously distinct discipline areas, particularly in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The future of ERA itself is addressed in order to propose interventions that might make a difference to an ecology that is anchored in traditions and tends towards inertia. Finally, we argue that efforts by universities to build research capacity are likely to continue to be competitive, to focus on the individual rather than on departments and schools, and to be subject to an increasingly pervasive culture of accountability. Against this discourse of accountability, and an accompanying loss in autonomy and creative ‘think-time’, we propose that academics in education actively engage in a community of research. We conclude with interventions designed to build a high-quality, analytical and theoretically intensive research culture to underscore educational research in Australia.