Ethnic and Racial Identity in Adolescence: Implications for Psychosocial,Academic, and Health Outcomes

The construction of an ethnic or racial identity is considered an important developmental milestone for youth of color. This review summarizes research on links between ethnic and racial identity (ERI) with psychosocial, academic, and health risk outcomes among ethnic minority adolescents. With notable exceptions, aspects of ERI are generally associated with adaptive outcomes. ERI are generally beneficial for African American adolescents' adjustment across all three domains, whereas the evidence is somewhat mixed for Latino and American Indian youth. There is a dearth of research for academic and health risk outcomes among Asian American and Pacific Islander adolescents. The review concludes with suggestions for future research on ERI among minority youth.     

Listening to Students: Customer Journey Mapping at Birmingham City University Library and Learning Resources

Birmingham City University's Library and Learning Resources’ strategic aim is to improve student satisfaction. A key element is the achievement of the Customer Excellence Standard. An important component of the standard is the mapping of services to improve quality. Library and Learning Resources has developed a methodology to map these “customer journeys” with students. The article considers themes in the published literature and provides an overview of a pilot project and its outcomes. The project's aims are evaluated including an assessment of the effectiveness of the mapping methodology in engaging students, the staff resource implications, and the identification of service improvements.     

Only By Moving Their Bodies

Physical education can achieve a stronger place in higher education, but to do so it will have to confront at least three important alternatives. These are strengthening its mission versus improving its accountability, limiting versus expanding this mission, and educating liberally versus schooling more narrowly. It is argued that redefining and limiting its mission, in addition to choosing some brand of liberal education, will best strengthen physical education in the arena of higher education. Alternately it is suggested that attempts to gain support by proving that physical education accomplishes traditional objectives (i.e., that it is maximally accountable), by expanding its goals to cover yet more educational turf, or by holding on to health and recreational “schooling” objectives will prove ineffectual if not also harmful for any attempt by physical education to seek a more central place in higher education.     

Professional Identity and Pedagogical Space: Negotiating difference in teacher workplaces

This paper explores “spatial struggle” in the formation of professional identities of overseas‐born teachers. The basis of this struggle arises from a limited number of subject positions available for them in pedagogical spaces of the Australian system of education. We argue that relations of power/professional knowledge in teacher workplaces as well as the binary strategy of “us” and “them” generate marginal locations for overseas‐born teachers within schools. This construction of marginality is informed not only by discourses of what counts as being a professional but also by the conception of workplace as a monocultural, pre‐given and bounded entity. By rethinking workplaces as relational, as locations that are connected to other socioculturally produced places through spaces of semiotic flows, we can also rethink the professional becoming of overseas‐born teachers. This involves a critical understanding of their situationality, which can be conceptualised as a struggle for professional recognition, voice and place within the real and imagined communities of teachers.     

Closing the Gap: Inquiry in Research and the Secondary Science Classroom

Teaching students how to conduct authentic scientific inquiry is an essential aspect of recent science education reform efforts. Our National Science Foundation-funded GK-12 program paired science graduate students—fellows—with secondary science teachers in order to enhance inquiry-based instruction. This research examined the roles of the fellows, teachers, and school culture in the implementation of inquiry and the fellows’ conceptions of classroom inquiry versus that in their own research. Qualitative data were collected for two academic years. Overall, the classrooms shifted toward a more inquiry-oriented approach over the academic year. Several aspects of school culture influenced inquiry implementation. Fellows described their research as similar in overall structure but less constrained by known concepts, less guided by mentors, and more in-depth than that of secondary school students. The teacher-fellow scientist partnership is a potentially effective professional development model to create positive and lasting change within the science classroom.     

A Longitudinal Examination of Racial Identity and Racial Discrimination Among African American Adolescents

This study tested the longitudinal association between perceptions of racial discrimination and racial identity among a sample of 219 African American adolescents, aged 14 to 18. Structural equation modeling was used to test relations between perceptions of racial discrimination and racial identity dimensions, namely, racial centrality, private regard, and public regard at 3 time points. The results indicated that perceived racial discrimination at Time 1 was negatively linked to public regard at Time 2. Nested analyses using age were conducted, and perceptions of racial discrimination at Time 2 were negatively linked to private regard at Time 3 among older adolescents. The findings imply that perceived racial discrimination is linked to negative views that the broader society has of African Americans.     

Lonergan's insight and threshold concepts: students in the liminal space

Threshold concepts are a widely used idea, particularly in curriculum design and evaluation of student learning. However they can be criticised as being hard to identify, vague and teacher imposed. Using the cognitive theory of Bernard Lonergan we argue that his epistemology enables us to reframe threshold concepts by adding a learner focussed understanding. We extend this to include considerations of liminality and ‘stuckness’, as well as the multiple paths to the threshold learners may take. Adding an understanding of cognitive process to the idea of threshold concepts also enables us to understand how they can be identified in disparate subjects.