Who says we are not attracting the best and brightest? Teacher selection and the aspirations of Australian school students

Internationally, the quality of teachers is a growing focus of educational reform, with new policies attempting to ensure that only the ‘best and brightest’ are selected for the teaching profession. This article tests the assumption underpinning these developments that prospective teachers lack the desired academic and personal qualities. Drawing on data on the career aspirations of 6492 Australian school students in Years 3–12, we investigated who, among these students, expressed interest in teaching and their reasons for doing so. Using logistic regression, we found that interest in teaching was widespread and prior academic achievement was not a significant predictor. Thematic analysis of reasons expressed for interest in teaching indicated that working with children and/or in specific subject areas, altruism, and perceptions of personal suitability for the job dominated student responses. These data provide a counter-narrative to the primacy, in policies for teacher recruitment and selection, of needing to attract ‘better’ students. We argue that policies for improving teacher quality should also capitalise on the widespread interest in teaching among school students. Without such a discursive broadening, we caution that current attempts to attract the ‘best and brightest’ risk undermining the very goals espoused.     

Temperament, Emotion, and Cognition at Fourteen Months: The MacArthur Longitudinal Twin Study

200 pairs of twins were assessed at 14 months of age in the laboratory and home. Measures were obtained of temperament, emotion, and cognition/language. Comparisons between identical and fraternal twin correlations suggest that individual differences are due in part to heritable influences. For temperament, genetic influence was significant for behavioral observations of inhibition to the unfamiliar, tester ratings of activity, and parental ratings of temperament. For emotion, significant genetic influence was found for empathy and parental ratings of negative emotion. The estimate of heritability for parental report of expression of negative emotions was relatively high, whereas that for expression of positive emotions was low, a finding consistent with previous research. For cognition and language, genetic influence was significant for behavioral indices of spatial memory, categorization, and word comprehension. Shared rearing environment appears influential for parental reports of language and for positive emotions, but not for other measures of emotion or for temperament.     

Preschool enrichment and learning

This paper discusses some of the basic cognitive units and processes involved in intellective functioning. It suggests that the basic units, consist of schemata, images, symbols, concepts, and rules and that motor action does not have to be an accompaniment to the acquisition of some of these cognitive structures. Comprehension, memory, generation of solution hypotheses, evaluation, and implementation are offered as the basic cognitive processes and some suggestions are made that may be helpful to the teacher. It is argued that the concept of intelligence has no explanatory meaning and that the components that are selected to characterize the intelligent child will change over culture and history. It is urged that communities and educators adopt a relativistic attitude toward the familial or educational experiences that promote optimal growth, for it is not possible to specify the correct set of experiences unless one simultaneously notes the cultural demands the child will encounter.

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Résumé L'auteur traite de certains procédés cognitifs de base qui font partie de la fonction intellectuelle. Il suggère que les structures de base consistent en schémas, images, symboles, concepts, et règles et que l'action motrice n'est pas nécessaire à l'acquisition de certains de ces structures cognitives. L'auteur considère la compréhension, la mémoire, les hypothèses de solution, l'évaluation, et l'exécution comme les procédés cognitifs de base; il offre quelques suggestions qui peuvent aider l'instituteur. L'auteur affirme que le concept de l'intelligence n'a pas de sens explicatif et que les traits qu'on choisit pour caractériser l'enfant intelligent changeront selon la culture et l'histoire. L'auteur propose que les communautés et les éducateurs adoptent une attitude relativiste envers les expériences familiales ou éducatives qui promeuvent le développement optimal, car il est impossible de préciser les expériences correctes à moins qu'on ne note en même temps les exigences culturelles que l'enfant rencontrera.

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Preparation of this paper was supported by grants from NICHD (HD04299), U.S. Public Health Service, and from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.     

The Body Frontier

The Finnish Art Teachers’ Society celebrated its 90th anniversary in 1996 with an exhibition `Picturing a Century’. In connection with this occasion, four students of the University of Art and Design Helsinki (Marjukka Barron, Mirka Kastinen, Iris Kärner-Kupiainen and Elina Heikkilä) organised a course ‘The Body Frontier’ involving 25 upper secondary school pupils from four Helsinki schools. One of the aims of the course was to bring forth the many possibilities art education offers, another was to expand the anniversary exhibition outside the museum walls, reaching people who do not usually go to museums. The course first examined different views of the body and studied historical and philosophical aspects as well as contemporary media images, and secondly the study of one’s own body; e.g. its form and the space it holds. The pupils made paper sculptures using their own body as a mould. The sculptures and a short video about their making were exhibited in the central shopping arcade Forum, adjacent to the museum with the main exhibition. The course instructors approached people in the arcade and discussed feelings and ideas evoked by the work. The process itself and the pupils’ ideas were documented in the museum with the main exhibition. The course was a successful experiment in co-operation between schools and a university, financing itself largely through commercial sponsorship. The exhibition provoked discussion about the dividing line between art education and `art proper’, and the public presentation of pupils’ work.     

Threats to the validity of science performance assessments for English language learners

In recent years, at the same time that performance assessments in science have become more popular, the number of English language learners (ELLs) (i.e., students whose native language is other than English) served by the U.S. educational system has also increased rapidly. While the research base is growing in each of these areas independently, little attention has been paid to their intersection. This case study of the use of a science performance assessment with 96 ELLs in five high school science classes investigated the face, construct, and consequential validity of this intersection. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses showed that both teachers and students had an overall favorable response to the assessment, although students' English comprehension and expression skills were determining factors for certain items. While most responses were reliably scored, ELL spelling and syntax on certain responses were significant sources of error. The degree of specificity of teachers' guidance also significantly affected students' scores. Recommendations from this study include increasing the clarity of an assessment's design, allowing ELLs more time to complete assessments, and scoring by raters who are knowledgeable about typical patterns in written English for this student population. Furthermore, it is recommended that the use of performance assessments with ELLs be exploratory until such time as their validity and reliability with this population can be more adequately established. J Res Sci Teach 34: 721–743, 1997.     

Innovation in social networks: knowledge spillover is not enough

Knowledge Management Research & Practice - Knowledge has become increasingly specialized and thus trapped in discipline and sector silos. A rich exchange of ideas across disciplines and sectors...     

The relation between individual interest and knowledge acquisition

The objective of this study was to examine how individual interest and knowledge acquisition are causally related. Three hypotheses were tested using a cross‐lagged panel analysis (N = 186) and two quasi‐experimental studies (N = 68 and N = 108) involving students from schools in Singapore. The first hypothesis is the broadly shared standard assumption on the relation between individual interest and knowledge: the more an individual is interested in a topic, the more (s)he is willing to engage in learning. An alternative hypothesis assumes that individual interest is not the cause but the consequence of the process of learning: individual interest as an affective by‐product of learning. Finally, a third possibility is that interest and knowledge influence each other reciprocally. The results supported the affective‐by‐product hypothesis. Our findings seem at variance with commonly held conceptions that being interested guides knowledge attainment. The implications of these findings for interest research are discussed.