Popularity versus respect: school structure,peer groups and Latino academic achievement

This article begins with a discussion of recent critiques of Fordham and Ogbu’s argument on the ‘burden of acting white’. These critiques point to the stereotypical and homogeneous characterization of the black peer group by Fordham and Ogbu, as well as their inattention to the ways in which schools relegate into the lower tracks those students who behave too ethnically and who do not demonstrate proficiency with dominant cultural attributes. The second half of the article presents data showing that academic achievement is related to peer‐group membership and that schools are largely responsible for which peer group students join. Based on an ethnographic study at a predominantly Latino urban high school, I argue that Latino high achievers do not necessarily experience the ‘burden of acting white’ as Fordham and Ogbu suggest. This was due to the institutional practices at Hernandez High School, which ensured that high achievers and low achievers occupied different academic and social spaces, resulting in little interaction between the groups, and to the very different culture that prescribed the ways in which members of each group could achieve status.     

The return of the repressed?: the gender politics of emergent forms of professionalism in education

Three distinct discourses frame this paper: ‘new public managerialism’, new modes of governmentality, and new masculinities and femininities. This paper considers the changing forms of governance in projects of educational professionalism emerging in the nested contexts of teaching, teacher training, and academic research within departments of education. It takes the production of the subject position of the manager/wo‐manager as central to managerialist regimes theorized as provoking and potentiating modes of recruitment, refusal, and mis/recognition. It illustrates this through a heuristic relational schemata constituted by the dominance of the managerialist—audit gaze. Taking a theoretically similar but methodologically different (i.e. non‐empirical) approach (or liberty?), one understands subject positions like Prichard and Deem, as produced ‘through a series of discursive or communicative practices’ realized in different ‘conditions of possibility’. The notion of ‘communicative practice’ was also put under scrutiny, given the monovocal as opposed to the dialogic nature of audit: ‘Audit is essentially a relationship of power between scrutinizer and observed: the latter are rendered objects of information, never subjects in communication’.1 This paper was originally given as part of a symposium on gender and teacher training in higher education at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference Leeds, 13–15 September 2001. The paper has been subsequently revised as a result of conversations with other colleagues in the Professional Education Research and Reading Group, Cathy Aymer and Toyin Okitikipi. It has also been significantly reworked in the light of reviews and we thank our reviewers for their insights. One is, thus, interested in the ubiquity of the ‘managerialist subject position’ as a limit condition for the professional self and how gender gets reworked within this. One is aware that the paper slides across the domains of teaching, teacher training, and academic and professional work identities. It is not presented as an orthodox ‘labour process’ account, neither is it a conventional sociological reading of ‘professionalism’. The authors wish to deliberately keep open the possibilities provided by this lack of specificity through exercising the sociological imagination. The following is best considered an experiment in social critique deriving from a post‐structuralist methodological stance. The aim is to capture through metaphorical means the temperature and tempo of some experiential dimensions of the gendered regulation of educational subjectivities, thought as a central psychosocial feature of the ‘domaining effect’ of audit.     

Expanding horizons—into the future with confidence!

Gifted students often show a deep interest in and profound concern for the complex issues of society. Given the leadership potential of these students and their likely responsibility for solving future social problems, they need to develop this awareness and also a sense of confidence in dealing with future issues. The Future Problem Solving Program (FPSP) was developed to meet these needs, by an emphasis on (a) problem solving, (b) creative solution finding, (c) group work and research skills, and (d) exploration of a wide range of current issues. In this Australian study, subsequently replicated in the United States, ten years of former program participants were surveyed to examine their perceptions of the impact of the program in the light of its objectives.     

Classifying Prosocial Behavior: Children's Responses to Instrumental Need,Emotional Distress,and Material Desire

This study investigates the diversity of early prosocial behavior by examining the ability of ninety‐five 2‐ to 4‐year‐olds to provide aid to an adult experimenter displaying instrumental need, emotional distress, and material desire. Children provided appropriate aid in response to each of these cues with high consistency over multiple trials. In contrast to the consistency with which the children provided aid within each task, there were no cross‐task correlations, and the tendency to respond to each of the cues revealed unique developmental trajectories. Taken together, these results provide preliminary support for the importance of examining the cues to which children are responding and of differentiating between varieties of aid when considering the development of prosocial behavior.     

Bridging the Gap Between Academic Gerontology and the Educational Needs of the Aging Network

Colleges and universities have failed to meet the long-recognized, growing need for nonacademic-credit gerontology education. With the explosive growth of the aging network, other organizations have readily responded to the fast-growing market. Results of two needs assessments over a 5-year period demonstrate employers' higher support for noncredit gerontology educational experiences over for-credit academic degree programs. The Professional Development in Gerontology Certificate Program at Kennesaw State University, which has grown substantially over the past 7 years, is a viable model for easy adoption by other colleges and universities who wish to meet community needs for gerontology noncredit education.     

Making the invisible visible: a methodological and a substantive issue

This article discusses the issue of ‘making the invisible visible’ from a methodological and a substantive viewpoint. The ideas emerged from a doctoral research study into individual target setting with middle ability students in an English secondary school. The students involved had been identified by assessments as ‘average’ and by their teachers as quiet, unnoticed children. It is suggested that the methods used by the researcher to elicit the students' perceptions could also be used by teachers in order to engage these quiet students in a learning discourse.     

Student laboratory presentations as a learning tool in anatomy education

Previous studies have shown that anatomy students who complete oral laboratory presentations believe they understand the material better and retain it longer than they otherwise would if they only took examinations on the material; however, we have found no studies that empirically test such outcomes. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of oral presentations through comparisons with other methods of assessment, most notably, examination performance. Specifically, we tested whether students (n = 256) performed better on examination questions on topics covered by their oral presentations than on other topics. Each student completed two graded, 12‐minute laboratory presentations on two different assigned topics during the course and took three examinations, each of which covered a third of the course material. Examination questions were characterized by type (memorization, pathway, analytical, spatial). A two‐way repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that students performed better on topics covered by their presentations than on topics not covered by their presentations (P < 0.005), regardless of presentation grade (P > 0.05) and question type (P > 0.05). These results demonstrate empirically that oral presentations are an effective learning tool. Anat Sci Educ 2: 260–264, 2009. © 2009 American Association of Anatomists.     

Undergraduate Students with Nonapparent Disabilities Identify Factors that Contribute to Disclosure Decisions

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the reasons university students with nonapparent disabilities gave for formally disclosing their disability and seeking the university’s disability services or not and the consequences they associate with their decisions. Conducted in a Mid-western four-year university, nine students with self-identified nonapparent disabilities participated in the study. Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted to gather in-depth data from participants. A five-stage approach to qualitative data analysis was adapted to analyse the data. The findings indicate positive experiences with formal disability disclosure, but revealed barriers impeding students’ desire to disclose. Recommendations challenge colleges and universities to create an inclusive ethos for all students with disabilities by removing barriers impeding their full participation in academia.     

Wasting Talent: Using Counter-Storytelling to Narrate Dismal Educational Outcomes

A recent study illustrated that the educational attainment of Latina/o students has been dismal during the past decade and that many Latinas/os continue to “fall through the cracks” of the educational pipeline. Through storytelling, I juxtapose my educational trajectory as a high school graduate with that of my third-oldest brother, who “fell through the cracks” of the educational pipeline as an underclassman in high school. I provide examples of how being reprimanded for minimal misconduct negatively impacted my older brother’s overall school experiences, which ultimately prevented him from finishing high school despite his potential to succeed.