Environmental education research in Brazil

Abstract

This Editorial to the current collection provides a brief historical, cultural, regional and contemporary picture of environmental education research in Brazil. Its main purpose is to offer readers a short background and orientation to the collection, and in so doing, illustrate how its contributions relate to some wider tendencies, trends and issues in environmental education, as well as to different locales of research and knowledge generation in the country. Of particular note for environmental education in Brazil are: the effects of social and political backdrops and issues, the unique environments on which environmental education is grounded, and how environmental education research, in turn, may echo or influence particular educational and public policies.     

Engaging With Quality Improvement Initiatives: A Descriptive Study of Learning in the Complex and Dynamic Context of Everyday Life for Family Child Care Providers

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: This article reports on family child care providers’ views about their engagement with professional development programs, including providers who were and were not participating in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems in Los Angeles, California. Most providers participating in the study were taking active steps to improve their work with children, but only a few providers described themselves as satisfied with the programs available. First, we report on why providers chose to engage (or not) in formal professional development activities; specifically, we explore the relationship between career phase and engagement and the levels of participation reported by seasoned providers. Second, we describe the way many providers strategically self-customized their quality improvement (QI) activities by drawing flexibly on available programs or by finding a coach who would work with them on their specific needs. Practice or Policy: Our findings suggest that in order to increase engagement with formal QI systems, designers of professional development supports must better align these supports with the needs and interests of family child care providers in terms of content and modes of delivery. We propose the concept of just-in-time professional development as 1 way to make QI offerings more responsive to some family child care providers’ needs.     

Verbal Short‐Term Memory Underlies Typical Development of “Thought Organization” Measured as Speech Connectedness

Formal thought organization obtained from free speech, a key feature for psychiatric evaluations, has been poorly investigated during typical development. Computational tools such as speech graph connectedness (LSC) currently allow for an accurate quantification in naturalistic settings. LSC's typical development is better predicted by years of education than by age. Among beginning readers, the LSC of stories composed of short‐term memory predicted reading independently from IQ. Here we set out to test a longitudinal sample (6–8 years old, n = 45, followed for 2 years) to verify whether the LSC is predictive of various memory measures, and whether such relations can explain the correlation with reading. The LSC was specifically correlated with verbal short‐term memory performance. The results support the notion that the short‐term storage of verbal information is necessary to plan a story. Given the limited sample size, the relationship of this interaction with reading remains inconclusive.     

A teaching accompaniment and development model: possibilities and challenges for teaching and learning centers

ABSTRACT

We propose a ‘1-to-1’ accompaniment and teaching development model emerging from the analysis and reflection of professional experience at a Teaching and Learning Center in a Chilean university. We highlight the relevance of the bond between professor and adviser and the establishment of a horizontal relationship, where both work collaboratively on the achievement of common objectives. This means breaking away from the classic view of the counseling process, where aspects of discipline and context are not necessarily considered. Despite size scalability issues, this model is flexible in its applicability and is adaptable to different university contexts. The implementation of this model is still under development, particularly in its evaluation phase.     

“Hello, goodbye”: Exploring the phenomenon of leaving teaching early

High teacher attrition rates hinder schools in their ability to provide quality instruction. This study seeks to understand why teachers leave early in their careers (within the first 5 years) using a mixed methods approach that combined 50 in-depth interviews with 15 public and 10 Catholic school teachers in the United States who left early with statistical analyses of public and Catholic school early leavers’ responses in the national Schools and Staffing and Teacher Follow-up surveys. This study argues that to understand why teachers leave early requires examining teachers’ entire experiences throughout their short time in the profession. A framework informed by sociocultural and commitment theories was developed through systematic analysis of the interview and survey data providing a complex approach for examining the phenomenon of early leaving. Findings suggest that teachers’ career decisions were influenced by the unique public and Catholic school cultures, as well as their commitment to teaching, their teaching experiences, and their beliefs and values. Differences between public and Catholic early leaver experiences are discussed.     

Employee mistreatment and muted voices in the culturally diverse workplace

This study examines mistreatment through the perspectives of employees with different cultural backgrounds and positions in order to understand the ways in which some voices are muted and others are privileged. Mistreatment is interactional, distributive, procedural, or systemic abuse of employees taking place at both interpersonal and institutional levels on the basis of cultural diversity. Narrative analysis of semi‐structured interviews with employees of a large research and development organization revealed three types of muted narratives used to respond to mistreatment (muted‐but‐engaged, angrily disengaged, and resigned) as well as one type of privileged response. The narratives provided evidence of two processes by which voices became muted: repeated silencing over time and silencing through ambiguity of policies.     

新自由主义常识与全球性大学：高等教育中的知识商品化

知识是组织高等教育活动的基本材料和学术生活的基础。传统上作为公共产品的知识正在发生转向,其商品属性和交换价值趋于增强,成为兼具公共产品与私人产品性质的一种混合型产品。在高等教育领域,知识商品化具有多种表征形式,侵蚀了高等教育的公共性。本文结合哈贝马斯和布迪厄的理论框架,阐述了以下观点:知识的公共产品性质是高等教育的公益性、高校的公共形象和学术人的公共身份的基础,也是基础研究的核心价值观之一。坚持知识的公共产品性质,抵制知识商品化的消极影响,既是知识的内在要求也是高等教育的内在要求。