Homophobia and heterosexism in a college of education: a culture of fear,a culture of silence

In this study, we examine how broad heteronormative discourses circulate, become embodied within, negotiated by, and potentially resisted within a university, a college of education, and educators themselves. We pay special attention to how heteronormative discourses at Southwestern University (SWU) impact the various roles this college of education undertakes to train professionals in a range of human service occupations, most notably K‐12 schools. In our findings, we demonstrate ways in which the institution of SWU maintains a hostile environment toward LGBTQ individuals, ways in which the college of education fails to interrogate such issues and train its educators and other human service personnel to deal with issues of sexuality and schooling, and how SWU, in regards at least to its conservative position on homosexuality, is constituted discursively as quite normal.     

Child-initiated learning,the outdoor environment and the ‘underachieving’ child

The Foundation Phase for Wales advocates an experiential, play-based approach to learning for children aged three to seven years that includes child-initiated activity within the outdoor environment. In previous research, Foundation Phase practitioners maintained that children perceived to be ‘underachieving’ within the classroom came into their own when engaged in child-initiated learning outdoors. This study, which involved eight Foundation Phase teachers, aimed to explore these perceived differences as well as teachers’ perceptions of ‘underachievement’. It is concluded that the more natural outdoor spaces in which child-initiated activity took place appeared to amplify the effects of child-initiated learning and diminish the perception of underachievement; that engagement in this project enabled some teachers to see ‘underachievement’ as being distributed across people, place and activity; and that through constructing the outdoor ‘space’ as a ‘place’ embedded with positive meanings, children may have had the opportunity to reconstruct themselves as strong, competent children rather than as ‘underachieving’ pupils.     

Reading Standards in Aberdeen 1962‐72

The 1962 reading survey in Aberdeen was repeated in 1972, with 99 per cent coverage of year‐groups (over 2,500) of 8‐year old and 11‐year‐old pupils: Reading comprehension tests used were NFER Sentence Reading Test AD and Test NS6. The 1972 averages on these tests were within one point of score of the 1962 averages: at age eight, the average was slightly but not significantly higher in 1972; at age 11, it was slightly and significantly lower. The children whose fathers were in semi‐skilled or unskilled jobs showed a particularly sharp decline in average performance over the ten‐year interval, whereas the standard of performance had improved or been maintained among children from professional homes.     

Untying a Dreamcatcher: Coming to Understand Possibilities for Teaching Students of Aboriginal Inheritance

Increasing the number of Aboriginal students graduating from university is a goal of many Canadian universities. Realizing this goal may present challenges to the orientation and methodology of university curricula that have been developed without consideration of the traditional epistemologies of Aboriginal peoples. In this article, three scholars in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria take up this issue by dialoguing with each other about the possibilities of incorporating Aboriginal perspectives into their courses. These conversations are woven together into the narrative form of a four-act play in which the authors caricature their personalities to highlight their initial resistances and eventual reconsiderations. As non-Aboriginal instructors from different cultural backgrounds, the authors confront issues of respect, responsibility, and (mis)representation as they struggle with the dilemmas involved in cross-cultural understanding. Through this journey they come to imagine a world where cultural differences, including the traditional epistemologies of Aboriginal peoples, present possibilities for greater understanding of each other and more authentic expressions of our humanity.     

Parental migration and children’s academic engagement: The case of China

In the context of China’s increasing rural-urban migration, few studies have investigated how parental migration affects children’s experience in school. The high cost of schooling, taken together with the institutional barriers in destination cities, have compelled many rural parents in China to migrate without their children, leaving them in the care of their spouses, grandparents, relatives or other caregivers. Still other parents migrate with their children, many of whom then attend urban migrant schools in their destination city. Understanding the academic engagement of children of migrant workers is particularly salient because the poor qualities of migrant schools, a lack of parental support, and exposure to competing alternatives to schooling may render both migrant children in the cities and left-behind children in the rural villages vulnerable to disengagement, and ultimately school dropout. Using data collected in 2008 in the urban Haidian and Changping districts of Beijing and rural Henan and Shaanxi provinces, the authors of this paper investigate the association between parental migration status and two measures of academic engagement, academic aspirations and the odds of liking school, by comparing migrant children attending migrant schools and left-behind children with their rural counterparts who do not have migrant parents. The authors’ findings show that migrant children attending migrant schools have lower academic engagement compared to rural children of non-migrant parents. The correlation between academic engagement and parental migration status can be accounted for in part by the support children receive from family and teachers. The association between certain measures of family and school support and academic engagement also varies by parental migration status: for example, high teacher turnover rates significantly reduce migrant children’s odds of liking schools, but do not affect children of non-migrant parents.     

Combining Best-Practice and Experimental Approaches: Redundancy,Images, and Misperceptions in Multimedia Learning

This experiment combined controlled experimental design with a best-practice approach (i.e., real course content, subjective evaluations) to clarify the role of verbal redundancy, confirm the multimodal impact of images and narration, and highlight discrepancies between actual and perceived understanding. The authors presented 1 of 3 computer-based lecture conditions: audio, redundant (audio with redundant text), or complementary (audio with nonredundant text and images). Audio and redundant conditions produced similar actual understanding, whereas the complementary condition produced greatest actual understanding. Redundant condition learners perceived their understanding as greater than their actual understanding. Findings encourage multimedia research to balance controlled experiments with a best-practice approach to better understand effective multimedia design.     

Monument Wars: Washington,DC, the National Mall,and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape

SELF‐CONSUMING ARTIFACTS: THE EXPERIENCE OF SEVENTEENTH‐CENTURY LITERATURE. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. pp. 432+xiv. $12.50.     

School Choice and Stratification in a Regional Context: Examining the Role of Inter-District Choice

Despite the growing popularity of interdistrict choice plans over the past decade, the policy assumptions underlying their adoption have been subjected to very little empirical research. This study situates school choice within one metropolitan region, Denver, and examines the ways in which choice patterns relate to existing patterns of stratification between school districts. This regional focus offers insight into the patterns of interdistrict choice and the influence these patterns have on equity within a metropolitan region. Findings from this study indicate that relatively higher income students were more likely to take advantage of interdistrict choice, and that choice was more often used by students to exit from a less advantaged context (as measured by socioeconomic status) to a relatively more advantaged one. The article concludes with recommendations for policymakers in designing more equity-minded choice policies.