College Women Mentoring Adolescent Girls: The Relationship between Mentor Peer Support and Mentee Outcomes

In this study, we examined the effectiveness of peer support for college women mentors who engaged in one-to-one and group mentoring with at-risk adolescent girls. Using data from 162 mentoring pairs, results suggested that mentor support positively predicted mentees’ self-reported improvement after a year of mentoring. An examination of mentees’ self-esteem outcomes revealed that mentor peer support was associated with higher outcomes only for those mentees who had higher pre-program scores; for those with below average pre-scores, mentor support was associated with lower self-esteem. Taken together, these results indicate that mentor support may serve as an important function beyond ongoing training, though its effectiveness may vary based on mentee characteristics. Implications are discussed.     

¿Usos cotidianos o usos enlatados? Enseñar y evaluar la lectoescritura a sujetos reales y mentes flexibles

En el campo del lenguaje y la lectoescritura, la renovación educativa parece estar situándose en la batalla por el diseño abierto y la evaluación informal. En este artículo se propone un modelo teórico para la lectoescritura flexible que pueda soportar las posibilidades que se abren y evitar los inconvenientes que amenazan a los actuales métodos informales de renovación a los que está dedicado el tema central de este número.     

Changing literacies,changing formations: the role of elicitation in teacher action research with new technologies

As new technologies promise to be an enduring feature of the landscape of teachers’ work, we consider how teachers implicitly bring stories forward into their classroom explorations with new media as a part of their ‘informal learning’. By ‘stories’ is meant specific classroom texts as well as preferred teacher practices with those texts. The article represents a reflection on the methodological role that ‘elicitation’ can play in drawing out teacher thinking during a time of professional change, thinking that would otherwise likely remain embedded, particularly when teachers’ attention is focused forward on innovation in practice. The methodological use of ‘elicitation’ emerged in the first year of an ongoing teacher action research study, in which seven teachers have been involved in a professional development initiative that actively engages teachers in examining changing literacy formations, beginning with the teachers’ own literacy formations. The methodological practice of elicitation borrows from phenomenology, ethnomethodology, narrative research, reader response theories, curriculum theory and psychoanalysis, and emerged as a way to acknowledge the life histories that teachers were bringing to their professional development with new media. We suggest that elicitation can potentially draw out deep and sustaining sources of a teacher’s commitment, as well as resistance, to change. It can help disclose the tensions between commitment and resistance that even teachers who voluntarily undertake to incorporate new technologies into their practice may experience. Within a teacher action research framework, elicitation can also serve to remind teachers (and others) of the value of what they know and are learning, thus contributing to teachers developing a ‘scholarship of practice’ in response to any actual or perceived ‘intensification’ of their work.     

Strategies for mentoring pedagogical knowledge

Fundamental for mentoring a preservice teacher is the mentor’s articulation of pedagogical knowledge, which in this research draws upon specific practices, viz.: planning, timetabling lessons, preparation, teaching strategies, content knowledge, problem solving, questioning, classroom management, implementation, assessment and viewpoints for teaching. Mentoring is haphazard; consequently, mentors need a pedagogical knowledge framework and a repertoire of pedagogical knowledge strategies to guide a preservice teacher’s development. Yet, what are strategies for mentoring pedagogical knowledge practices? This qualitative research investigates mentoring strategies assigned to pedagogical knowledge from 27 experienced mentor teachers. Findings showed that there were multiple strategies that can be linked to specific pedagogical knowledge practices. For example, mentoring strategies associated with planning for teaching can include co-planning, verbally reflecting on planning with the mentee and showing examples of the mentor teacher’s planning (e.g. teacher’s plans, school plans, district and state plans). This article provides a bank of practical strategies for mentoring pedagogical knowledge practices to assist a preservice teacher’s development.     

Data in Motion: Sports as a site for expansive learning

ABSTRACT

Background and Context

Sports and technology are often pitted as being at odds with one another. While there are several educational activities that make reference to sports we seldom see sports used as an authentic context for learning computing.     

高校青年教师导师制的现实困境和解决之道

高校青年教师导师制对于促进青年教师专业成长,增强青年教师的责任感、使命感和职业意识具有积极作用,也有利于促进教师之间的沟通与协调.然而,高校青年教师导师制在实施过程中仍面临不少问题,面解决的关键在于建构平等对话的语境和文化,以及确立多向交互式指导关系,强化监督、考评工作,并落实相关配套措施.     

The Scientist as School Teacher

Many scientists, driven by the teaching impulse, idealism, or the wish to see science thrive in the United States, take up one or another form of school teaching or participate in programs designed to enhance science teachers' knowledge of science and science teaching skills. Funding is available, from governmental and private sources, to support innovative programs designed to increase the supply of well-trained science teachers. The provision of new funds to support graduate programs in fundamental science that provide a separate track for graduate students who choose a career in teaching, in preference to a career in the laboratory, is a particularly promising development. It is essential that such programs include proper training in pedagogy. Above all, the Nation must recognize the need to provide proper long-term salary support for science teachers in the public schools countrywide, if any of the programs to improve teaching is to succeed.     

African–American Mentoring Program (AAMP): addressing the cracks in the graduate education pipeline

In this conceptual article, we focus on mentoring as a strategy to mend the cracks in the education pipeline for African American graduate students. Our article highlights the African American Mentoring Program (AAMP) model and examines the unique methods it uses to support the retention and graduation of African American graduate students from a university and their transition to the workforce. AAMP operates from a Transitional Cultural Framework and strives to bridge the gap between the students’ culture and the culture of the university. AAMP’s uniqueness is harnessed in its deep roots in culture, history, collectivism, and inter-generational sharing of knowledge. We end with implications and recommendations for universities and future research.     

Learning and engagement through natural history museums*

This review examines how natural history museums (NHMs) can enhance learning and engagement in science, particularly for school-age students. First, we describe the learning potential of informal science learning institutions in general, then we focus on NHMs. We review the possible benefits of interactions between schools and NHMs, and the potential for NHMs to teach about challenging issues such as evolution and climate change and to use digital technologies to augment more traditional artefacts. We conclude that NHMs can provide students with new knowledge and perspectives, with impacts that can last for years. Through visits and their on-line presence, NHMs can help students see science in ways that the school classroom rarely can, with opportunities to meet scientists, explore whole topic exhibitions, engage with interactive displays and employ digital technologies both in situ and to support learning in the school science classroom. Although these interactions have the potential to foster positive cognitive, affective and social outcomes for students, there is a lack of reliable measures of the impact of NHM experiences for students. Opportunities to foster relationships between NHM staff and teachers through professional development can help articulate shared goals to support students’ learning and engagement.     

Learning To Read Each Other: Black Female Graduate Students Share Their Experiences at a White Research I Institution

This paper uses Black Feminist Thought to explain the lived experiences of three Black female graduate students at a White Research I institution. Through mentoring from Black female professors, the students received instrumental and psychosocial support that helped them to navigate through their graduate level work. Common themes of identity, community service missions, and empowerment provides a thread that ties the student’s narratives together. We close by offering some suggestions for further research on the Black graduate experience and mentoring Black graduate students. Meca R. Williams, Denise N. Brewley, R. Judith Reed and Dorothy Y. White are affiliated with University of Georgia. Rachel T. Davis-Haley is affiliated with University of New Orleans.