Naming a Personal “Unearned” Privilege: What Pre-service Teachers Identify After a Critical Multicultural Education Course

This qualitative study systematically documents pre-service teachers' responses to a writing prompt asking them to name a personal “unearned” privilege on an end-of-term final assessment. Findings suggest that typical White/European heritage pre-service teachers can name privileges that have advantaged their own lives, even after one 14-week critical multicultural education course. Categories reveal patterns in participants' responses about their own privilege that are traditionally attended to in critical multicultural education curriculum, such as White privilege. However, student responses show that students are most comfortable talking about inherited privileges related to social class and race is named at a lower rate. Other responses show a range of privileges that students can draw on when they reflect on the structured nature of privilege in society. Overall, our findings suggest that when opportunities are created for students to grapple with complex, personal, emotional concepts, the vast majority of students are willing and able to perform this type of reflection and analysis. This work begins a discussion of what kinds of social privilege are more easily discussed in a high stakes assessment after experiences in critical multicultural education. Our findings provide nuanced understandings of how typical pre-service teachers name their own personal unearned privileges and deconstruct their experiences of privilege. Our findings suggest that attention to privileges associated with social class could provide powerful entry into examinations of other personal privileges in critical multicultural education.     

The relationship between resistance to change and Romanian teachers’ attitude towards continuing education: the moderating role of conscientiousness

Previous research highlights that personal factors are more important than contextual factors in explaining teachers’ behaviours in relation to learning participation. The present study explores the relationship between two personal factors (dispositional resistance to change and teachers’ attitude towards continuing education) and the moderating role of conscientiousness on this relationship. The data have been gathered from 142 teachers from the field of special and public education, using three questionnaires: Revised Adult Attitudes Towards Continuing Education Scale, Resistance to Change Scale and IPIP-50. The main results show that, firstly, conscientiousness has a moderating role on the relationship between dispositional resistance to change and enjoyment of learning, and secondly, teachers in special education consider their continuing education as being more important than teachers in the regular system. Knowing this, we can predict and increase teachers’ participation in continuing education and can improve training design.     

Filipino teachers’ experiences of supportive relationships with colleagues: A narrative-biographical inquiry

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore teachers’ experiences of supportive relationships with colleagues. A total of fifty (50) public and private elementary and secondary school teachers in the central part of the Philippines were purposively selected as respondents. Guided by a narrative-biographical interview, results of the study yielded four significant themes that describe how Filipino teachers as relational people experience and interpret supportive relationships in the school setting. These include: supportive relationships as (1) a life-giving force; (2) an extension of one’s family; (3) a reciprocal process; and (4) a work still in progress. This paper is a segment of her dissertation entitled: Evolving a Continuum of Filipino Teachers’ Worldview of Pedagogy based on the Narrative-Biographical and Micro-Political Perspectives.     

Clery Act: Road to Compliance

The purpose of this study was to explore what factors served as impediments to institutional efforts to comply with Clery Act guidelines through the perceptions of campus law administrators. Statistical analyses were performed on data collected from an online survey, which was distributed to members of the International Association of Campus Law Administrators currently working at colleges and universities in the United States. Survey items were designed to explore the relationship between the following factors and Clery Act compliance: (a) institutional resistance, (b) ambiguity in the Act, (c) lack of funding, (d) lack of support, and (e) inaccurate reporting. Mazmanian and Sabatier’s Theory of Effective Policy Implementation was used as a conceptual framework to examine challenges to institutional compliance with the Clery Act statute. The findings in this study will be used to help college administrators assess how to improve the performance level of campus law personnel in relation to promoting campus safety and complying with the Clery Act statute.     

Educational Conservatism and Democratic Citizenship in Hannah Arendt

The purpose of this article was to gain a deeper understanding of Arendt’s educational philosophy, her perspective of political involvement as a kind of political education, and natality as the fundamental nature of education. The current study has extended past research by elucidating Arendt’s view of participatory democratic politics, her analysis of citizenship education programs, and her assessment of the crisis of education. The findings of this study have implications for Arendt’s idea of pedagogical authority, the specific character of Arendt’s contribution to political theory, and her grasp on the link between citizenship and education.     

Teacher Quality Indicators as Predictors of Instructional Assessment Practices in Science Classrooms in Secondary Schools in Barbados

This study investigated the self-reported instructional assessment practices of a selected sample of secondary school science teachers in Barbados. The study sought to determine if there were statistically significant differences in the instructional assessment practices of teachers based on their sex and teacher quality (teaching experience, professional qualification and teacher academic qualification). It also sought to determine the extent to which each of these four selected variables individually and jointly affected the teachers’ report of their instructional assessment practices. A sample of 55 science teachers from nine secondary schools in Barbados was randomly selected to participate in this study. Data was collected by means of a survey and was analyzed using the means and standard deviations of the instructional assessment practices scores and linear, multiple and binary logistic regression. The results of the study were such that the majority of the sample reported good overall instructional assessment practices while only a few participants reported moderate assessment practices. The instructional assessment practices in the area of student knowledge were mostly moderate as indicated by the sample. There were no statistically significant differences between or among the mean scores of the teachers’ reported instructional assessment practices based on sex ( t?=?0.10; df?=?53; p?=?0.992), teaching experience ( F[4,50]?=?1.766; p?=?0.150), the level of professional qualification (F[3,45]?=?0.2117; p?=?0.111) or the level of academic qualification (F[2,52]?=?0.504; p?=?0.607). The independent variables (teacher sex, teaching experience, teacher professional qualification or teacher academic qualification) were not significant predictors of the instructional assessment practices scores. However, teacher sex was a significant predictor of the teachers’ report of good instructional assessment practices. The study also found that the joint effect of the variables teacher sex, teaching experience, teacher professional qualification and teacher academic qualification was not significant in predicting the instructional assessment practices scores of the science teachers. However, the joint effect of these variables was statistically significant (X ²?=?18.482; df?=?10; p?=?0.047) in predicting the teachers’ reported use of good instructional assessment practices. The best predictor of teachers’ report of good instructional assessment practices, though not statistically significant, was the diploma in education professional qualification.     

“If Only I Did Not Have That Label Attached to Me”: Foregrounding Self-Positioning and Intersectionality in the Experiences of Immigrant and Refugee Youth

In order to bring forth the specific intricacies of the migration experience among comparatively understudied immigrant and refugee youth, this article bridges an intersectionality framework with multicultural education scholars’ calls to flexibility and fluidity in conceptualizing culture and identity. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the analysis is anchored by two pervasive themes: (a) the dynamic nature of identity positions whose intersections make the adaption of youth irreducibly nuanced and (b) the need for self-definition in the process of adaptation. Racial and ethnic positioning, national origin, class, legal status, and religion intersected in the participants’ lives in important ways, but they did not fulfill the same role across the cases. Attention to how these social locations intersect offers insight into the importance of context-based examinations of immigrant youth positioning, in addition to the centrality of structural analyses. Taking on an intersectionality lens, educators can engage both with the need to examine newcomer youth's situations structurally, while also tuning in to their interpretations, local contexts, and how various structural positions are foregrounded or obscured in their immigrant and refugee students’ paths.