The impact of an international field experience on preservice teachers

This study addresses the question, “What is the impact of an international field experience on preservice teachers?” and corroborates many of the findings of a similar study by Willard-Holt [(2001). The impact of a short-term international experience for preservice teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17, 505–517]. In May 2005, 15 teacher education students from the US completed a 4-week international practicum, working in the classroom with teachers and students at a private international primary through secondary (K12) school in Rome, Italy. Data include preservice teachers’ reflections and comments collected from their personal journals, focus groups with supervisors, observation notes, a final reflection paper, course evaluations, and a questionnaire completed 1 year after the experience to assess any lasting impact the trip may have had on them as individuals and future teachers. While there were a few negative experiences, the results indicate that overall the benefits included both professional and personal changes, such as increased confidence, a better appreciation and respect for differences of others and other cultures, and an awareness of the importance that feedback and reflection play in professional and personal growth. The article concludes with recommendations on how to improve such experiences to enhance the personal growth and cross-cultural competency of preservice teachers.     

Collective Trolling as a Form of Organizational Resistance: Analysis of the #Justiceforbradswife Twitter Campaign

This case study analyzed Twitter posts from the #JusticeForBradsWife campaign against the Cracker Barrel (CB) restaurant chain. Participants in the counterinstitutional movement employed diverse message strategies of humor and resistance in using social media as a site for discourse. Thematic analysis of the most influential users revealed humor strategies including: connecting to popular culture, political comic relief and using hyperbole. Participants’ resistance strategies included: making calls for action, critiquing CB products and business partners, attacking CB patrons, critiquing CB’s social media management, and offers of support from outside organizations. These strategies reflected collective trolling, where trolling behaviors created a hidden and public hybrid form of collective resistance from nontraditional stakeholders who had contradictory goals. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Embodied encounters with more-than-human nature in health and physical education

ABSTRACT

Despite the importance of interactions with natural environments for personal and social well-being, there is only limited evidence of the relationship between the environment and health as an idea or area of study in school education in Australia. Logically, the place for such a study, at least in Australia, would be within the Health & Physical Education (HPE) key learning area. However, in HPE, alternative ways of considering health beyond the dominant ‘healthism’ discourses which privilege physical activity, fitness, food and nutrition struggle for any kind of existence. Gruenewald (2004. A Foucauldian analysis of environmental education: Toward the socioecological challenge of the earth charter. Curriculum Inquiry, 34(1), 71–107) suggests looking to the margins of a field to see what knowledge is silenced or subjugated in order to open up new conditions of possibility. This challenged us to look beyond taken for granted ways of thinking about health to identify other resources, perhaps unrecognised as yet, that teachers might draw on to constitute their knowledge of health. To do this, we look to interview data collected when teachers were asked to talk about their personal experiences of the relationship between the environment and health. The analysis of the interviews demonstrated how the teachers conceptualised the relationship between the environment and health by drawing on embodied experiences and affective encounters with more-than-human nature. By theorising these encounters through a post-human, new-materialist lens, we demonstrate how their corporeal knowledge, developed through embodied experiences, has the potential to assist teachers in formulating less institutionalised health understandings. We argue that these encounters with more-than-human nature can serve as alternatives to those dominant healthism discourses that invoke problematic risk, fear and crisis responses.     

Moving bodies beyond the social/biological divide: toward theoretical and transdisciplinary adventures

In this paper I call for ‘new forms of thinking and new ways of theorizing’ the complex relations between the biological and social in sport and physical culture. I illustrate the inseparability of our biological and social bodies in sport and physical culture via the case of exercise and female reproductive hormones. Inspired by feminist biologists and philosophers of science such as Lynda Birke and Elizabeth Grosz, I describe my current research project in which I am seeking to create space for female exercisers' (as distinct from female athletes) voices about their embodied experiences of exercise-associated amenorrhea. I offer reflections from my ongoing study and reveal a number of dilemmas that emerge as I consider how we might bring biology—and particularly hormones—back into conversations about women's moving bodies in non-reductionist and non-determinist terms. I conclude by advocating the need for more transdisciplinary approaches to help us move toward more multidimensional understandings of the body in sport and physical culture.     

The influence of personal attitude on instructor intent to integrate online collaborative activities

Education and Information Technologies - Collaborative activities are a method used in higher education to develop the higher-order skills that students need to succeed in today’s workforce....     

The (mis)interpretation of teaching evaluations by college faculty and administrators

Student evaluations of teaching are ubiquitous and impactful on the careers of college teachers. However, there is limited empirical research documenting the accuracy of people’s efforts in interpreting teaching evaluations. The current research consisted of three studies documenting the effect of small mean differences in teaching evaluations on judgements about teachers. Differences in means small enough to be within the margin of error significantly impacted faculty members’ assignment of merit-based rewards (Study 1), department heads’ evaluation of teaching techniques (Study 2) and faculty members’ evaluation of specific teaching skills (Study 3). The results suggest that faculty and administrators do not apply appropriate statistical principles when evaluating teaching evaluations and instead use a general heuristic that higher evaluations are better.     

Counselor Educators and Qualitative Research: Affirming a Research Identity

The lack of enthusiastic research activity among counseling professionals has been a subject of professional concern for the last 2 decades. Many graduates of counselor education programs are not connected to academic research and do not establish a research identity. Qualitative research methods have the potential for creating this connection for some students. To increase understanding of the nature and potential usefulness of this paradigm for increasing counselors' connection to academic research, the authors conducted a phenomenological study to investigate the experiences of counselor education doctoral students as they encountered qualitative research. Students' positive responses were summarized as they reflected 4 themes: worldview congruence, theory and skills congruence, research identity and professional viability, and holistic nature of perceptions and experiences.     

Writing Prompts: The Role of Various Priming Conditions on the Compositional Fluency of Developing Writers

This study addressed two questions related to the writing of second graders (n=195). The first examined the effects of writing prompts on the compositional fluency of second-grade students. The second considered whether these effects are different based on spelling achievement and handwriting fluency. Students wrote six narratives in response to writing prompts presented in different ways (copying, dictation, discussion, discussion-copying, discussion-dictation, and topic). An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with repeated measures showed that priming condition and writing occasion were significant effects. Interactions were found between priming condition, occasion, and each of the covariates (handwriting fluency and spelling achievement). Analysis of the sample based on the covariates revealed differential effects for the slowest and fastest writers and poorest and best spellers.     

Green beans: Gardening with two's

The nearby neighborhood garden project provided an almost daily trip for our group of two-year-olds. There we discovered limitless opportunities for learning. Gardening provided a sense of continuity that is hard to achieve with young ones.Karen Hack is the Early Childhood Special Education Teacher of the two's group at the Infant Care Center. Virginia Flynn was the Administrative Supervisor of the Infant Care Center and is currently Assistant Education Director of the Infant Health and Development Program, The New York League for Early Learning, Inc.