Exceptional educators: a collaborative training partnership for the inclusion of students with Down's syndrome

This article discusses the results of a teacher training initiative in the United States. Exceptional Educators is the result of an inter‐organisational collaboration between a community‐based organisation (Gold Coast Down Syndrome Organization), the local public school system and a university professor. The training focuses on three distinct objectives; understanding the physical and emotional needs of the disability, creating modified curriculum units based on individual learning goals and recognising common behavioral problems that arise in school settings. Overall, the results showed positive outcomes, with gains in knowledge of curriculum modification, behavioural strategies and overall understanding of Down's syndrome, as well as an increase in confidence level. A six‐week follow‐up survey indicated that the majority of the participants used the information presented back in their teaching environments. This study also investigated the added value of this collaboration, finding that the community connection often continues past the training and has provided teachers additional avenues for support.     

Fertile Soil? How Information does (and does not) Shape Attitudes toward School Choice in Rural America

ABSTRACT

The role of political factors, specifically of public opinion, in the relatively low penetration of charter schools into rural America remains unclear. We use 8 years of national survey data to demonstrate that rural residents express less support for charter schools than residents of other locales do. We attribute this gap to differences in familiarity with charter schools across these locales rather than to differences in satisfaction with local schools or to differences in demographics, party affiliation, or political ideology. However, using a survey experiment and an oversample of districts with charter schools, we show that increased exposure to these schools or information about them does not boost support in rural communities. Lastly, we demonstrate a similar urban-rural gap in support for private school choice policies such as vouchers and tax credits for private school scholarships.     

The (un)invited guest? Feminist pedagogy and guest lecturing

Teaching a one-off session on a colleague’s course is a commonplace occurrence in higher education teaching practice, but it is not an area that has received sufficient attention in pedagogical literature. This article focuses on the scenario where a feminist teacher is invited to give a guest lecture, but is not sure if working with feminist pedagogy will be welcome. Guest lecture pedagogy is outlined: (i) guest lectures are always and yet never a one-off, because they are always embedded in wider teaching practice (ii) guest lecture pedagogy is both a struggle between time and pedagogical principles and an opportunity to break with convention. The challenges and risks of implementing feminist pedagogy in a guest lecture are considered; ultimately the article argues that a feminist teacher cannot simply ‘lay aside’ feminist pedagogy for a guest lecture, but that some compromises will be necessary in adapting practice for this type of teaching.     

The Remote Area Teacher Program (RATEP): Cultural contextualisation of distance education through interactive

The Remote Area Teacher Education Program (RATEP) is a successful and innovative distance education programme. Curriculum design demands the meaningful integration of traditional distance education materials and strategies with other electronic technology and interactive multimedi a computer courseware. RATEP is more than ‘two‐way schooling’ for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander distance education students studying in their home communities. Centred within Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development, the interactive multimedia computer courseware is informed by the intersecting set of the various cultural contexts: academic culture embedded in Western culture; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and that of the computer. Illustrative examples from generalist and mathematics content and curriculum subjects demonstrate the effectiveness of culturally contextualising instructional computer‐student interface design in order to promote learning through interactive.     

The Black Arts Movement and African American Young Adult Literature: An Evaluation of Narrative Style

In this article I question whether or not African American young adult literature serves as a primer for, and a version of, African American adult literature. Using the Black Aesthetic as my literary theory and the Coretta Scott King Award as the young adult canon, I note that while the content of adolescent literature is consistent with the tenets of the Black Aesthetic and African American adult literature, the literary elements and style are not. As such, young readers of African American young adult literature are not necessarily prepared for the literary elements and style of canonical African American adult literature. Further, I note that editors, publishers, and literary critics may contribute to the construction of young adult literature, in that editors may discourage authors from experimenting with form and style. Finally, I call for reorienting Black children’s and adolescent literature away from White literary elements and style and toward Black literary elements and style.     

‘Supportive’, ‘real’, and ‘low-cost’: implicit comparisons and universal assumptions in the construction of the prospective college-based HE student

This paper first argues for the importance of continued analysis of marketising discourses in Higher Education (HE), both despite and because of their ubiquity. Secondly, the paper looks specifically at college-based HE provision in English Further Education (FE). Using the ‘possible selves’ concept alongside critical discourse analysis, the paper analyses the representations of prospective students on marketing web pages for HE provision in FE colleges. Arguing that the web pages reveal more than just the limited language of HE marketing strategy, the paper highlights common representations of the college-based HE student across policy, research and marketing sources. By exploring both the celebratory and the limiting nature of these representations, the paper therefore asks what the pages’ projections of future or prospective students can tell us about current understandings of English college-based HE.     

Interpersonal behaviour in senior high school biology classes

This article describes the first use of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction in senior biology classes and describes students' perceptions of their interpersonal relationships with their teachers in the classroom environment. The article also describes associations between students' perceptions of interpersonal relationships with their teachers and student outcomes. The study confirmed the reliability and validity of the QTI when used in senior secondary biology classes. Generally, the dimensions of the QTI were found to be significantly associated with student attitude scores. In particular, students' attitude scores were higher in classrooms in which students perceived greater leadership, helpful/friendly, and understanding behaviours in their teachers.     

A comparative judgement approach to the large-scale assessment of primary writing in England

ABSTRACT

Writing assessment is a key feature of most education systems, yet there are limitations with traditional methods of assessing writing involving rubrics. In contrast, comparative judgement appears to overcome the reliability issues that beset the assessment of performance assessment tasks. The approach presented here extends previous work on comparative judgement by directly involving teachers in a large number of schools in the judging of young pupils’ writing. To ensure quality control the process incorporated a process of ‘anchoring’ that ensured that teachers could not artificially inflate their own pupils’ scores. The approach was used to assess the writing of 55,599 primary pupils in England in 2017–2018. Overall, the results showed that a comparative judgement approach to writing incorporating anchoring shows promise in providing a fair and robust large-scale method to assess writing.     

Marriage, adult adjustment, and early parenting

The impact of parents' marriages, measured prenatally, on their parenting of firstborn, 3-month-old infants was assessed. Though the association between marriage and parenting was the focus, adult psychological adjustment was measured also to rule out the alternative hypothesis that psychological adjustment relates to both marital quality and parenting quality and accounts for any association between them. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses in which parental adjustment was entered first as a covariate were used to test the relation between close/confiding marriages and parenting of 3-month-old infants. From the findings, it was concluded that even when differences in individual psychological adjustment are taken into account, mothers are warmer and more sensitive with their infants and fathers hold more positive attitudes toward their infants and their roles as parents when they are in close/confiding marriages. It is asserted that qualities of marriage play an important part in the development of parent-child relationships.