Peer reviews of teaching as appreciative inquiry: learning from “the best” of our colleagues

Higher Education - Research on peer review to date has focused on its role as a formal compliance mechanism, a process for enhancing and developing teaching practice, and as a considerable source...     

The Counseling Opportunity Structure: Examining Correlates of Four-Year College-Going Rates

This study examines the relationships between the normative and resource dimensions of a high school counseling department and four-year college-going rates. Utilizing data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS: 09), we employ multiple regression and latent class analysis to identify salient factors related to the college-going culture of a high school and to classify schools according to their underlying counseling opportunity structure, respectively. Results demonstrate that both norms (i.e., average caseload and hours spent on college counseling) and resources (i.e., college fairs, college course offerings, and financial aid) are important predictors of a school’s four-year college-going rates. These results, in turn, produced a three-level typology of schools based on a divergent, emergent, and convergent classification system. The study concludes with a discussion of findings and implications for researchers and policymakers interested in improving and better understanding the counseling opportunity structure.     

Priorities for primary education? From subjects to life-skills and children's social and emotional development

To what needs and purposes should the primary curriculum be chiefly directed in the coming decades? In a first step towards revising the primary curriculum, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) invited responses to an open online call to ‘have your say’ on priorities for primary education. Respondents were asked to share their views in 100 words or less. Six priorities for primary education were identified across the 960 responses. These focused on developing children's life-skills; communication skills; well-being; literacy and numeracy skills; motivation and engagement; and their sense of identity and belonging. Across the priorities, there is recognition that skills learned in the primary years are related to one another and the extent to which children develop these is likely to have wide-ranging effects on their future experience as learners. Findings call for a revision of traditional, content-based curriculum subjects towards a better alignment with the needs of today's primary school children beginning with a more explicit focus on life-skills, and children's social and emotional development. Finally, we note the common ground across early childhood, primary and post-primary sectors and highlight the potential to align our values and vision for children and young people's education from the earliest years through adulthood.     

Constructing men who teach: research into care and gender as productive of the male primary teacher

This paper argues that in order to begin loosening the ties that bind care and gender in primary education, we need to re-examine the knowledge sought and found by educational research about teachers. The focus is primarily on how we understand men who teach. Through an examination of two scholarly texts – Ashley, M., and J. Lee [2003 Ashley, M., and J. Lee. 2003. Women Teaching Boys: Caring and Working in the Primary School. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham. [Google Scholar]. Women Teaching Boys: Caring and Working in the Primary School. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham] and King, J. [1998 King, J. 1998. Uncommon Caring: Learning from Men Who Teach Young Children. New York: TCP. [Google Scholar]. Uncommon Caring: Learning from Men Who Teach Young Children. New York: TCP] – I argue that we must be mindful that our research can effectively produce and reiterate common-sense understandings of men that binds them to the hegemonic masculine ideal. It is argued that mixed-method qualitative research that untangles the layers of context influencing the lives of men who teach is important. The paper also suggests that the study of male teachers' emotions, as at once individual and social, and private and public, can disrupt the rational–emotional binary that cements care to gender and reveal new configurations of the gender order.     

The Legacy of Early Insecurity Histories in Shaping Adolescent Adaptation to Interparental Conflict

This study tested whether the mediational pathway involving interparental conflict, adolescent emotional insecurity, and their psychological problems was altered by their earlier childhood histories of insecurity. Participants included 230 families, with the first of the five measurement occasions occurring when children were in first grade (M_age = 7 years). Results indicated that interparental conflict was associated with increases in adolescent emotional insecurity that, in turn, predicted subsequent increases in their psychological problems. Childhood insecurity predicted adolescent maladjustment 5 years later even after considering contemporaneous family experiences. Moderator findings revealed that adolescents with relatively higher levels of insecurity in childhood evidenced disproportionately greater and reduced levels of insecurity in the context of high and low levels of interparental conflict, respectively.     

SUPERVISION IN SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY: THE DEVELOPMENTAL/ECOLOGICAL/PROBLEM‐SOLVING MODEL

Effective supervision models guide the supervisory relationship and supervisory tasks leading to reflective and purposeful practice. The Developmental/Ecological/Problem‐Solving (DEP) Model provides a contemporary framework for supervision specific to school psychology. Designed for the school psychology internship, the DEP Model is also applicable to all pre‐service and advanced field‐based training, as well as career‐long continuing professional development. The Developmental domain initiates training at the functioning skill level of the supervisee and progresses toward independent competency. The Ecological domain addresses the multiple systemic contexts that influence school psychology practice and prepares the intern to intervene within both individual and systemic contexts. The Problem‐Solving domain focuses on the application of data‐based decision making and evidence‐based interventions to the full range of school psychology activities. It provides a systematic schema to address student, family, and school needs.     

Pedophilic sexual interests and psychopathy in child sexual abusers working with children

Research has identified stable and dynamic characteristics in child sexual abusers working with children (CSA-W) that may distinguish them from other child sexual abusers (CSA). However, in previous research CSA-W have usually been included in the group of extra-familial CSA (CSA-E). Two hundred and forty-eight forensic-sexological reports about CSA conducted by the Federal Evaluation Centre for Violent and Sexual Offenders in the Austrian Prison System were evaluated retrospectively. One hundred and nineteen intra-familial CSA (CSA-I), 66 CSA-E, and 38 CSA-W were compared with regard to static risk factors, indicators of psychopathy, and pedophilic sexual interests. CSA-E had the highest risk of recidivism as measured by the Static-99 total score, followed by CSA-W. Furthermore, CSA-E had more previous convictions than CSA-W. Both CSA-E and CSA-I had higher total scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised than CSA-W. CSA-W had the highest prevalence of pedophilia diagnoses according to DSM-IV-TR criteria, as well as the highest rate of pedophilia with an orientation toward male children, and the highest frequency of male victims. CSA-W also had the highest total scores in the Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests. CSA-W seem to constitute a group with particular risk factors and criminogenic needs, that is, they show more indicators of pedophilic sexual interests but less general antisociality and psychopathy, and would thus seem to be distinguishable from other CSA. Future research should focus in particular on evaluating differences in the grooming strategies used by CSA-W to commit and disclose child sexual abuse, as well as on the resources of this particular offender group.     

Curriculum spaces for connecting to children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases

Elementary mathematics curriculum materials can serve as a lever for instructional change. In this paper, we promote a particular kind of instructional change: supporting teachers in learning to integrate children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases (MMKB), including children’s mathematical thinking and children’s home and community-based mathematical funds of knowledge, in instruction. A powerful means of supporting pre-service teachers in integrating children’s MMKB in instruction may be to scaffold teachers’ noticing of potential spaces in elementary mathematics curriculum materials for connecting to children’s MMKB and then developing practices for leveraging these spaces during instruction. We focus on existing and potential spaces in written curriculum materials, or curriculum spaces, so as to better support teachers in enacting curriculum that opens spaces for connecting to children’s MMKB.