Unpacking personal identities for teaching mathematics within the context of prospective teacher education

This article explores the personal identities of two prospective elementary teachers as they progressed from mathematics methods coursework into their capstone student teaching semester. Results indicate that both prospective teachers perceived contrasting obligations of effective mathematics teaching in the teacher education and student teaching contexts, yet came to reconcile these differences in different ways. Whereas one prospective teacher was able to oppose the obligations set forth in the student teaching context, the other complied with obligations in both the teacher education and student teaching contexts. Implications for teacher education include differentiated experiences and placements, methods design, and explicit foci on students’ mathematical thinking.     

Children at play: the role of peers in understanding the effects of child care

Although the studies of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Early Child Care Research Network (this issue) and of Watamura, Donzella, Alwin, and Gunnar (this issue) identify the potential of child care to affect children's adjustment, how these effects are produced remains unclear. In this commentary, it is argued that there is a need to expand child care research by considering one of the most important, but unrecognized, contributors to child care effects-peers. Research is reviewed that suggests that children's interactions in same-sex peer groups at child care affect their short- and long-term adjustment. We consider how research on early peer influences can inform the findings of the NICHD Early Child Care Research Network and Watamura et al. studies, aswell as contribute to the next generation of child care research.     

Is Schooling a Risk? Gender,Power Relations,and School Culture in Uganda

This article relates a study of AIDS education in Uganda which used an ethnography of school culture to explore the contradictions in curriculum intervention. The school was found to be a site of an extensive set of gendered practices which constituted a risk in themselves in terms of sexual health. Four forms of control are examined in this article: hegemonic masculinity, gendered discipline patterns, sexual harassment and 'compulsory' heterosexuality. Male domination and power imbalances in the school encouraged attitudes and practices with regard to sexual relationships which negated the official messages of the AIDS curriculum.     

Children's Responses to Character Education

This is an investigation of Character Education in American public schools in the Chicago area. The research involved interviewing almost 700 children from a wide variety of schools and ages. The children were asked about their views on citizenship, Americanness and identity. They were also asked explicitly what they thought of Character Education. The results indicate that, despite a similar programme of education, teaching attitudes and teaching materials, the most marked difference between the children's responses correlated strongly with the type of school, magnet or non-magnet, they were attending. This indicates that the social and political background, which determines their school, does have an impact on the way that an educational programme is received and understood, at least in the terms of how children articulate their ideas, if not in terms of how these programmes affect their behaviour.     

Pedagogy and possibility thinking in the early years

Connecting to current work in the area of creative pedagogies, this paper reports findings of an exploratory study that sought to identify what characterises possibility thinking in young children's learning experiences and how teachers’ pedagogical practice fosters this critical aspect of creativity. It focuses in particular on pedagogy, seeking to demonstrate how approaches adopted facilitated children's possibility thinking. Possibility thinking has been conceptualised as being central to creative learning although its role, as manifest in the learning engagement of children and the pedagogical strategies of practitioners has not been fully illuminated. The co-participative research team involved in this study comprised staff in an early childhood centre, in an infant and a primary school, working collaboratively with three university-based researchers. The 12-month long segment of a longer study employed various data collection methods including video-stimulated review (VSR) to facilitate reflection, critical conversations, classroom observation, interviews and examination of planning documents. The paper illuminates the perspectives and embedded values that the teachers expressed whilst reflecting upon their practice, and highlights common pedagogical themes, including the practice of ‘standing back’, profiling learner agency and creating time and space. Particular strategies were employed by each of the teachers. These approaches appeared to foster possibility thinking in young learners. In addition, the paper considers the development of the teachers’ thinking through the phases of the research process and presents a model for conceptualising a pedagogy of possibility thinking.     

The effects of differing type and magnitude of reward on the contrafreeloading phenomenon in rats

This investigation was made to determine the effects of the magnitude of reward on contrafreeloading, using food or water as reward. Two quantities were selected for each level of reward quality—a 20-mg-pellet food reward, a 45-mg-pellet food reward, a .01-cc water reward, and a .1-cc water reward. Seven days of training were followed by three test sessions. There was a significantly higher percent of contrafreeloding demonstrated with food as reward than with water and higher number of barpresses with small reward than with large. It was argued that a more appropriate measure should include reference to performance during training. In this approach, contrafreeloading with food and water were virtually the same.     

The relative effects of pre- and postattention directing devices on learning from a “walk-through” museum exhibit

Twenty-eight seventh and eighth grade students were randomly assigned to two treatments and a control as they entered the Florida State Museum. All subjects were given set induction materials saying in effect: (1) Treatment-Study the wall panel which is part of the cave exhibit and describes the many biologic relationships and organisms in the cave at the cave entrance. Continue into the cave and study the habitat. When you exit the cave you will be given a test to see how much you learned; (2) Treatment II-Enter the cave and study that habitat. When you exit at the other end, study the wall panel which is part of the cave exit and describes the many biologic relationships and organisms in the cave. After studying this panel you will be given a test to see how much you learned; (3) Control-You will take a walk through exhibits depicting a variety of Florida Habitats and later see a film on the Habitats of Florida that are represented in the museum. Then you will be given a test to determine how much you know about one type of habitat. Both treatments and the control spent equivalent time at their tasks and were confronted with either the cave exhibit as described or the equivalent control experiences. A 25 item criterion test was designed to measure the acquisition of conceptual and factual knowledge and specific attentional factors relative to both the cave and the instructional panel. A Kr-20 indicated that this instrument had a reliability coefficient of 0.80. It was anticipated that the panel, used as an attention directing and controlling device prior to entering the cave (Treatment I) or upon exiting the cave (Treatment II), would function as a forward-shaping or backward review prompting adjunct, hence both should be significantly more effective than the control. This was confirmed (df 2,28; F 8.09) p < 0.01. It was also expected that the forward shaping panel would be more effective than the backward review panel in the tradition of inserted questions in prose research. Although the differences were in this direction, they were not significant (p≤ 0.10).     

To promote,or not to promote fundamental British values? Teachers’ standards,diversity and teacher education

In this article we seek to problematize the presence of the requirement within the teachers’ standards (DfE, 2012), that they ‘should not undermine fundamental British values’ in the context of initial teacher education in England. The inclusion of this statement within the teachers’ code of conduct has made its way from the counter‐terrorism strategy, Prevent and raises questions about Britishness, values and the relationship between the state and the profession more generally. We argue that the inclusion of the phrase within a statutory document that regulates the profession is de facto a politicization of the profession by the state thereby instilling the expectation that teachers are state instruments of surveillance. The absence of any wider debate around the inclusion of the statement is also problematic as is the lack of training for pre‐service and inservice teachers since it means this concept of fundamental British values is unchallenged and its insidious racialising implications are unrecognised by most teachers.     

The transformation of Australian higher education from binary to unitary system

The policies of the Australian federal government are clearly intended to bring about a fundamental transformation of the country's higher education system. The Australian case, however, presents several paradoxes. Policy changes are being initiated by a federal government that has no legislative control over state chartered higher education institutions. While the federal government wishes to see a more diversified and adaptive higher education system, it seems to be implementing a reward structure for individual institutions and academics which encourages imitation of the elite universities. Although government claims that its new policy initiatives are designed to debureaucratize the system, a significant proportion of the Australian academic community claims that government is centralizing control. This article explores these and other issues facing Australian higher education, not for the purpose of resolving the seeming paradoxes, but to suggest a particular research agenda for investigating change in higher education.