Cultivating community: detailing school and community engagement under complex conditions

This article reveals the nature of actions, discussions and relationships which helped forge school-community partnerships for engaged student learning and wider community participation for students and families living under difficult socio-economic circumstances. Specifically, the article draws upon interviews with key personnel and staff involved in the establishment and enactment of a ‘Community Partnerships’ programme to help improve the opportunities for students attending a primary school serving a low socio-economic urban community in south-east Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon the notion of educational practice as a product of ongoing interactions between particular actions (doings), discussions (sayings) and relationships (relatings), which both constitute and are responsive to particular conditions or ‘architectures’ for practice, the article reveals how the conceptualisation, establishment and consolidation of the community partnerships programme was dependent upon specific ‘relatings’ between key district and school personnel, the actions/‘doings’ of these personnel and ongoing ‘sayings’/dialogue about their work. Collectively, these ‘doings’, ‘sayings’ and ‘relatings’ all helped to stimulate new conditions – ‘practice architectures’ – for improved opportunities for students and their families. Teacher education informed by such theorising of community partnerships as the product of specific actions, dialogue and relationship-building is vital for developing improved understandings of such interactions and partnerships over time.     

Tracking the Topological: The Effects of Standardised Data Upon Teachers’ Practice

This article draws upon recent theorising of the ‘becoming topological’ of space– specifically, how new social spaces are constituted through relations rather than physical locations – to explore how standardised data, and specifically test data, have influenced teachers’ work and learning. We outline the varied ways in which teacher practices at a primary school in Queensland, Australia, were actively constituted through processes of ‘tracking data’ and ‘keeping data on-track’, and how teachers were simultaneously being disciplined, or ‘tracked’, by these very same data. Our analyses suggest that what appear to be more ‘technical’ activities and tasks of ‘using’ data are, in fact, actively constituted modes of governance, enabled through and deployed by ongoing practices of comparison and topological respatialisation.     

Visual and auditory coding confusability in students with and without learning disabilities

The nature of visual and auditory coding processes in students with learning disabilities (SLDs) and student controls (SCs) was examined with a letter-matching task on four types of successively presented letter pairs: identical (A,A), visually confusable (P,R), auditorily confusable (F,S), and neither visually nor auditorily confusable (N,T). Two delay intervals (0 and 2 seconds) were used between the presentation of the first and second letters. Analysis of decision latencies on the nonidentical letter pair trials revealed that with initial exposure to the task, the SLDs responded more slowly than SCs, but their general confusability patterns (visual and auditory) were similar. With additional practice, overall decision latencies were comparable for the two groups, while confusability differences emerged: SCs showed maximal visual confusability at a 0-second delay and maximal auditory confusability at a 2-second delay, while SLDs did not. Evidently, SLDs make less extensive use of visual and auditory coding processes compared to SCs.     

Does Part-Time Faculty's Self-Efficacy Predict Critical Dimensions of Online College Teaching?

Surveys have repeatedly depicted a dismal picture of part-time teaching in academia, including low pay, scant benefits, limited institutional support, and lack of job security. Thus, the main purpose of the present study was to delve deeper into part-time faculty's ability to sustain the demands of a tough work environment by examining the extent to which specific psychological characteristics predict key self-reported dimensions of teaching in such faculty. The sample selected comprised part-time online instructors, as they are a relatively new and growing entity in academia. Teaching dimensions upon which faculty rated themselves belonged to three categories of factors known to shape satisfaction of faculty in the online environment (i.e., instructor-related, student-related, and institution-related). They included current satisfaction with the teaching profession, preparation to teach subject matter, responsibility for students' academic success, beliefs in the impact of one's teaching on student learning, perceived institutional support, and desire to remain in the teaching profession (i.e., commitment). Psychological characteristics examined were self-efficacy and self-monitoring. In this study, each key dimension of teaching was found to be positively related to one or more self-efficacy measures, whereas no links with self-monitoring were uncovered. The findings involving self-efficacy confirm those of studies of full-time faculty in that beliefs of one's capability are a source of resilience and, as such, a staple of the teaching profession.     

Contesting continuing professional development: reflections from England

This paper argues the competing ways in which continuing professional development (CPD) is currently practised in schooling settings in England is a product of the complex social conditions within which teachers work and learn, and teachers’ efforts to make sense of these conditions. Specifically, the paper draws upon research into the teacher learning practices, and conditions of practice, of a group of 18 teachers from one inner-city comprehensive secondary school in the British Midlands. To make sense of competing approaches to CPD within the school, the paper analyses these teachers’ experiences in light of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of social practices as contested. The research reveals competing approaches to teacher CPD in relation to the management of teachers’ CPD, the focus upon improving test scores and the modes of learning in which teachers participate. The paper shows how conflicting pressures and demands in the context within which teachers work, and teachers’ responses to these demands, contribute to contested practices in and across these domains, both arising from and resulting in what is described as a ‘hybridised’ habitus. The research gestures towards the need to cultivate conditions conducive to more educationally oriented, critical, situated and collaborative CPD.     

Teachers’ professional development in special needs settings: creating ‘kid-cool’ schools in challenging times

This paper explores the nature of teachers’ professional development (PD) practices in special needs/special education settings in Australia under current neoliberal and managerial conditions. The research is based on individual interviews with teachers from a juvenile justice centre and a dedicated special needs school in a regional city in the state of New South Wales. Bourdieu’s conception of social practice as contested is applied to make sense of teachers’ understanding of the conflicted nature of PD practices in these schooling settings. The findings reveal teacher PD in these special needs settings is influenced by the increased commodification of education, broader accountability pressures which seek to individualise teachers’ PD experiences, and increased attention to a narrower range of educational outcomes, particularly students’ test scores. However, at the same time, these settings also enable more localised, collaborative inquiry focused upon specific students’ needs, and PD relevant to a multi-faceted conception of students’ learning. In this way, teacher PD contributes to a focus upon student learning in all its complexity, even as it is simultaneously confined by neoliberal and managerial pressures.     

Reasons for Attending,Expected Obstacles,and Degree Aspirations of Asian Pacific American Community College Students

This study examined how the academic aspirations of Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) attending community colleges are influenced by their demographic and educational background, reasons for attending, and obstacles they expect to encounter. The sample consisted of 846 APAs out of a total student sample of 5,000 in an urban community college district. The analyses compared results for ethnic groups within the APA community as well as APAs with other racial groups. The key finding—that APA community college students often consist of recent immigrants—should lead institutional researchers to collect data on their numbers, characteristics, and needs.     

Special Edition on Access and Diversity Guest Editors' Introduction

In the knowledge economy, now more than ever, students are encouraged to attend an institution of higher education. Students actively search for resources to assist them in their progress toward a college degree, even before high school graduation. Dual enrollment is an opportunity for students to complete college courses while still in high school, and it encourages stronger collaborations between K–12 and higher education. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between demographic and policy variables in South Carolina technical college dual enrollment programs and first-to-second-year persistence of dually enrolled students once entering college. All participants in this study were high school students who continued at a technical college after graduation. Outcomes were analyzed using logistic regression to determine persistence, defined as first-to-second-year retention. Variables included dual enrollment course type, course setting, ethnicity, gender, and county of residence. Results show that course type and course setting are significant in predicting college student persistence. Recommendations and implications for future research are discussed.     

The relationship between the use of kinaesthetic imagery and different visual imagery perspectives

In two studies, we examined the strength of relationship between internal and external visual imagery with kinaesthetic imagery. In Study 1, 56 participants completed the Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire and the Movement Imagery Questionnaire. Pearson's product–moment correlations failed to reveal a significant correlation between external visual imagery and kinaesthetic imagery. However, the correlation between internal visual imagery and kinaesthetic imagery approached significance. In Study 2, the instructional set of the Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire was changed to make the participant the ‘agent’ of the external visual perspective images rather than somebody else. Sixty-four participants completed the two questionnaires. The results indicated a significant correlation between external visual imagery and kinaesthetic imagery (r?=?0.60, P?<0.01). However, the correlation between internal visual imagery and kinaesthetic imagery was non-significant (r?=?0.23, P?>0.01). The results are discussed in relation to who is the agent of the image and the processes that may underlie kinaesthetic imagery. The implications for researchers trying to establish the functional, behavioural and neurological differences within, and across, imagery modalities are considered.