National monitoring in social studies: the reliability of assessment interviews

The National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) is responsible in New Zealand for the national assessment of primary school children's achievement in the essential learning areas, one of which is social studies. Individual interviews are one of the approaches used to assess students' understanding. The assessors are registered teachers, selected by NEMP, who attend a training week where they learn how to conduct the standardised assessment tasks and associated interviews. This study examines the reliability of the assessment interviews used in the 2005 round of social studies monitoring, in particular the variations between teacher administrators (TAs) in their use of prompts and probes. The extent of variation observed in the use of three kinds of prompt was sufficient to raise questions about the reliability of the assessment process. A surprising outcome was the consistent failure of TAs to clarify and elucidate students' social studies understandings through the judicious use of probes. The prompt-related variations between TAs and their failure fully to ‘tap into’ understandings assessed by interview-based tasks are serious threats to the validity of claims regarding students' achievement in social studies. This is particularly concerning as NEMP data are used as the basis for identifying and reporting national patterns and trends in educational performance and making recommendations to policy-makers, curriculum planners and educators.     

Arts enrichment and preschool emotions for low-income children at risk

No studies to date examine the impact of arts-integrated preschool programming on the emotional functioning of low-income children at risk for school problems. The present study examines observed emotion expression and teacher-rated emotion regulation for low-income children attending Settlement Music School's Kaleidoscope Preschool Arts Enrichment Program. At a level of p < .001, results indicate the following. First, within Kaleidoscope, children showed greater observed positive emotions such as interest, happiness, and pride, in music, dance, and visual arts classes, as compared to traditional early learning classes. Second, children at Kaleidoscope showed greater observed positive emotions than peers attending a comparison preschool that did not include full integration of the arts. Third, across the school year, children at Kaleidoscope showed greater growth in teacher-rated levels of positive and negative emotion regulation. The implication is that arts enrichment may promote social–emotional readiness to learn for low-income children at risk for school problems.     

Contextual Risk,Maternal Negative Emotionality,and the Negative Emotion Dysregulation of Preschool Children From Economically Disadvantaged Families

Research Findings: This study examined relations between contextual risk, maternal negative emotionality, and preschool teacher reports of the negative emotion dysregulation of children from economically disadvantaged families. Contextual risk was represented by cumulative indexes of family and neighborhood adversity. The results showed a direct pathway linking family adversity to child negative emotion dysregulation and indirect pathways for both family and neighborhood adversity through maternal negative emotionality. Practice or Policy: The results suggest the importance of conceptualizing distal and contextual aspects of the ecology of disadvantage as well as more proximal caregiving variables in interventions targeted for young children showing negative emotion dysregulation.     

Mentoring: Immigrant teachers bridging professional practices

New teachers who enter Australian educational systems must acquire suitable knowledge that enables them to function effectively as a teacher in this country. For immigrant professionals new to the system mere transfer of knowledge does not suffice and does not satisfy their professional perception of self. Teachers who are born and trained overseas lack culturally specific educational knowledge. These shortfalls can initiate unforseen dilemmas for their professional development and shifts in their definition of self. Acquiring new knowledge requires teachers to understand the social elements of learning and teaching in local contexts and to apply them appropriately. Mentoring relationships can be a means of bridging the gap between the newcomers' former ways of knowing and current practice, thereby mobilizing their capacity to operate effectively as a teacher in their new contexts and develop a positive professional identity. In this paper we draw on interview data from a study that involved immigrant teachers.     

Limitations of focussing on homophobic,biphobic and transphobic ‘bullying’ to understand and address LGBT young people's experiences within and beyond school

This paper presents new empirical data that highlight how a focus on ‘bullying’ is too limited and narrow when thinking about homophobia, biphobia and transphobia that young people may experience. The paper draws on two recent studies with young lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans participants, which each identified issues and experiences not readily captured within dominant bullying discourses and understandings. Findings are examined within three sections: beyond ‘bullying’, questioning inevitability, and (in)appropriate responses. In conclusion, I set out some implications and suggestions for the development of practice and future research concerning homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in youth settings.     

Foreign Film

George Perry's The Great British Picture Show from the 90s to the 70s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974---$12.50)

Mildred Constantine and Alan Fern's Revolutionary Soviet Film Posters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1974---$12.95)

Michael Jon Stoil's Cinema Beyond the Danube: The Camera and Politics (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974---$6.00)

Antonin J. Liehn's Closely Watched Films: The Czechoslovak Experience (International Artistic Sciences Press, 901 North Broadway, White Plains, N.Y. 10603, 1974---$15.00)

Eleanor Beatty's A Handbook of Canadian Film (Toronto: Peter Martin Association with Take One, 1973---price not known, paper)

Kuleshov on Film: Writings by Lev Kuleschov (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974--- $10.00)

Susan Sontag's Brother Carl (New York: Noonday Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974---$10.95/4.95)     

The effect of colour of tester on performance on a group reading test

A study of the relationship between colour of tester and performance on a group reading test was carried out using, as testers, two student teachers of similar experience and appearance apart from colour of skin and, as subjects, 24 children of families of West Indian origin and 24 indigenous children matched for school, sex and age (8-9 yrs). Parallel forms of the Young Group Reading Test (Young, 1969) were administered on alternative occasions by the black tester and the white tester. Differences between the mean group scores were not statistically significant. Correlations between performance on test and re-test by ethnic group, sex, school, colour of tester for first test and form of test for first test were statistically significant, and at or beyond the .05 level. Evidence of ethnic-group effect was not apparent. Attempts to reduce stress e.g. the use of group tests, may have inhibited the expression of ethnic-group effect, if indeed it existed.