Teachers in action research: assumptions and potentials

Research literature has long indicated that action research may stimulate practitioners themselves to actively evaluate the quality of their practice. This study is designed to report the use of action research for the development of early years professional practice by analyzing the pre‐project and the post‐project video‐filmed teaching events. The finding was that action research might support knowledge development in the teacher profession. However, the teacher's ability to accommodate outside knowledge might be limited by one's inside knowledge. The study helps to clarify the assumptions and potentials of action research for teachers learning to teach.     

Roles and positioning in a meeting between Finland‐Swedish bilingual pupils and their teacher*

This paper explores some aspects of the dialogue between bilingual pupils and their teacher in a Swedish‐speaking school in Finland, in a strongly Finnish‐dominated environment. Using a socio‐cultural perspective I look behind the immediate interaction in the classroom to show how pupils express and position themselves through the classroom dialogue. Thus the dialogue extends beyond the specific situational context. For the bilingual pupils, part of their school life involves finding and understanding the systems and the open and hidden codes that exist and affect communication in the school. The changed face of the linguistic situation in the Swedish‐speaking schools in Finland requires changed practices of teaching.     

Emotional arousal of beginning physics teachers during extended experimental investigations

Teachers often have difficulty implementing inquiry‐based activities, leading to the arousal of negative emotions. In this multicase study of beginning physics teachers in Australia, we were interested in the extent to which their expectations were realized and how their classroom experiences while implementing extended experimental investigations (EEIs) produced emotional states that mediated their teaching practices. Against rhetoric of fear expressed by their senior colleagues, three of the four teachers were surprised by the positive outcomes from their supervision of EEIs for the first time. Two of these teachers experienced high intensity positive emotions in response to their students' success. When student actions/outcomes did not meet their teachers' expectations, frustration, anger, and disappointment were experienced by the teachers, as predicted by a sociological theory of human emotions (Turner, J. H. (2007). Human emotions: A sociological theory. London, England: Routledge). Over the course of the EEI projects, the teachers' practices changed along with their emotional states and their students' achievements. We account for similarities and differences in the teachers' emotional experiences in terms of context, prior experience, and expectations. The findings from this study provide insights into effective supervision practices that can be used to inform new and experienced teachers alike. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50:137–161, 2013     

Book Reading in Leisure Time: Long‐Term changes in young peoples' book reading habits

In this study, the merit of using deliberative democratic evaluations is studied in light of ten questions asked by House and Howe, which defined the approach and raise issues of interests, representation, and choice of stakeholders, power balances and procedures for controlling them, participation, reflection and deliberation. Suggestions by Clark and Moss for using a mosaic approach were followed. This indicates, when listening to children, many fragments integrate into a whole picture. The emphasis here was on listening to children's views and defining values and evaluation criteria so that they reflect our definition of childhood and quality of childcare. Children had other priorities than parents and staff in some instances, for example regarding length of stay and autonomy. Greene's issues of power, core matters, and biases were utilized for reflection on issues.     

The Intercultural Dimension in EFL‐Teaching: A Study of Conceptions Among Finland‐Swedish Comprehensive School Teachers

The overall aim of this study is to deepen our knowledge about the attitudes of teachers at the upper level of the Finland‐Swedish comprehensive school towards the treatment of culture in English foreign language (EFL) teaching. More specifically, the questions are how teachers interpret the concept “culture” in English foreign language teaching, how the cultural objectives are specified and what teachers do to attain these objectives. The study strives to reveal whether or not language teaching today can be described as intercultural in the sense that culture is taught with the aim of promoting intercultural understanding, tolerance and empathy. The empirical data consists of verbatim transcribed interviews with 13 Finland‐Swedish teachers of English at grades 7–9. The findings are presented according to three orientations. Within the cognitive orientation, “culture” is perceived as factual knowledge and the teaching of culture is defined in terms of the transmission of facts. The action‐related orientation sees “culture” as skills of a social and socio‐linguistic nature and the teaching aims at preparing students for future intercultural encounters. Within the affective orientation, “culture” is seen as a bi‐directional perspective. Students are encouraged to look at their own familiar culture from another perspective and learn to empathise with and show respect for otherness in general, not just concerning representatives of English‐speaking countries.     

On Comparing Transition Rate Gains

Reuterberg, S.‐E. 1985. On Comparing Transition Rate Gains. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 29, 175‐190. Making transition rate gains comparable is a problem because it is much more difficult to change a very high or very low transition rate than to change a rate near the proportion 0.50. It is shown that measures based on the proportions themselves — i.e. the difference between proportions, the proportion ratio and the residual gain ratio — do not make the gains comparable. Instead a non‐linear transformation has to be done. Two such transformations are discussed: probits and logits. As shown in the report, they both make the transition gains comparable.

A problem more important than the choice of transformation is that of sample error. Therefore, a statistical test is to be recommended. It is shown that log‐linear models are an appropriate test for this purpose.     

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF SUICIDE RISK ASSESSMENT PRACTICES IN THE SCHOOL SETTING

Suicidal behavior in children and youth continues to be a major public health problem in the United States. School personnel have a legal and ethical obligation to recognize and respond to the mental health needs of their students and to take steps to ensure their safety. In this exploratory study, suicide risk assessment practices of three large school districts were examined. More than 3,400 suicide risk assessments were conducted in these districts during the 3 years considered. The results indicate that all three districts have implemented suicide prevention programs that include risk‐assessment practices in an effort to reduce suicidality. Suicides risk assessments were conducted with at least one child in each grade from kindergarten through 12^th in each district, occurring most frequently at the middle school level. Differences by gender were noted in terms of level of risk and hospitalizations, but no significant differences were observed based on race/ethnicity. These risk assessment efforts of these three districts appear to be promising in preventing suicides: none of the students who were assessed went on to commit suicide. Implications for school‐based practices and training are discussed.