The role of the English learner facilitator in developing teacher capacity for the instruction of English learners

As a field, we have a limited understanding and a dearth of empirical research concerning the role of high school instructional coaches focused on English learners (ELs). This paper examines one EL facilitator’s work as an instructional coach and resource for supporting mainstream content teachers as they learn to meet the needs of adolescent ELs in one high school. This analysis is grounded within an examination of the influence of school structure and organization on the EL facilitator’s work and her role as a resource. Drawing on sociocultural learning theory, as well as literature on teacher leadership and instructional coaching, case study data from a year-long qualitative research project are analyzed. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed.     

Identifying pathways of teachers’ PCK development

This paper describes a method of analysing teacher growth in the context of science education. It focuses on the identification of pathways in the development of secondary school teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) by the use of the interconnected model of teachers’ professional growth (IMTPG).The teachers (n = 12) participated in a one-year action research project focused on their individual concerns related to teaching science. The use of the IMTPG revealed that teachers use different pathways of learning to develop different aspects of their PCK. For each PCK component, three distinct pathways could be identified, two of which clearly were associated with professional growth. When examining these two pathways in detail, it was found that (1) teachers learned about new instructional strategies and assessment methods mostly through literature reviews and discussions with peers and (2) teachers who analyzed and reflected on student learning as it happened in their classrooms developed understandings that helped them to select and apply instructional strategies to further promote student learning. Both the analytical method as well as the identification of the different developmental pathways help to better understand teacher development in the context of classroom practices.     

Analysis of academic administrators’ attitudes: annual evaluations and factors that improve teaching

This article examines academic administrators’ attitudes towards the academic evaluation process in the US and those factors that are utilised to improve teaching. We use path regressions to examine satisfaction with evaluation procedures, as well as the direct and indirect effects of these factors on perceptions of whether the evaluation process facilitates quality instruction. With increased pressure for accountability being placed on higher education, it is important to ensure that we are meeting both public and academic expectations. The evaluation process is an important tool to ensure the university’s goals and values are articulated and that academics can be successful in their individual career paths. The problem is most research finds flaws with the current method of evaluation, and academics and academic administrators are sceptical about the process and results. We find there are environmental factors that influence academic administrators’ perceptions of academic evaluations and the ability to improve classroom instruction.     

Empowerment through sex education? Rethinking paradoxical policies

Youth empowerment is the main goal of sex education according to Dutch Government and NGO policies. Academics from different disciplines have argued, however, that the ideal of empowerment through education is problematic, because of the unequal power relations implicated in educational practices. Building on one-and-a-half years of online and offline ethnographic fieldwork among Dutch youth, this article argues that Dutch sex educational policies inhibit rather than encourage young people’s empowerment by allowing only a limited number of sexual knowledge building practices to thrive while making others nearly impossible. In order to facilitate young people’s empowerment, policies should aim to create space for young people to develop their own themes and priorities, to offer a multitude of perspectives, to set the pace and to use different strategies for sexual knowledge building, including learning by doing and online learning. This requires a cultural shift that involves both an openness to young people’s experimentation, and a change in existing power hierarchies based on age.     

Agenda setting in multilateral contexts: the example of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

A number of papers have focused on UN policy formulation processes, but little is known about how particular issues come to policy-makers’ attention in the first place. This very early stage of policy formulation, called agenda setting, remains under-researched and more so in multilateral contexts. Applying Kingdon’s multiple streams model to the example of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), this study analyses the trajectory of the policy from being just an idea to the point of being placed on the UN agenda. This paper goes on to argue that there are three conditions that supported the successful trajectory of DESD: a funding-backed policy entrepreneur, policy oligopoly, and a highly predictable policy window. Its theoretical contribution is to fill the gap between current studies and theories by presenting an analysis of one policy in a multilateral context.     

‘The students do not know why they are here’: education decision-making for Syrian refugees

This case study, conducted collaboratively between education scholars and education practitioners, describes and analyses the ways in which Syrian refugee teachers and an NGO are developing and implementing non-formal education (NFE) programming in three refugee settlements in Lebanon. Utilising the INEE Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies, we analyse teachers’ and programme administrators’ decision-making processes regarding curriculum, language of instruction, and pedagogy as well as how and why these decisions are made in the absence of a guiding framework or policy for NFE. We also consider the ways in which the nation-state writ large still helps to influence these decisions in the ‘global era’.     

Resisting English: Excavating English Ideologies of Young Boys through Chutkule at an Indian Orphanage

The prevailing scholarship on Indians’ beliefs about English has, with few exceptions, largely failed to capture ideological resistance. Given the supremacy of English within the hierarchically ordered and unequal linguistic landscape in India, this study intervenes within this limited area of research. This investigation excavates ideologies of resistance to English through chutkule, a humorous folk genre, narrated by young boys at an anathashram (orphanage) in suburban New Delhi. The theoretical lens of language ideology is employed to unpack latent issues of resistance and erasure within the chutkule, and emergent ideological tensions are interpreted in the context of educational equity. In addition to locating beliefs about language in a previously unresearched genre, this study adds to the limited scholarship on Indians’ ideological resistance to English. Further, because these notions are mined through the boys’ chutkule at the anathashram, this investigation illuminates previously neglected discourses from India’s socioeconomic margins.     

The Impact of a Professional Development Program on Teachers' Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching,Instruction, and Student Achievement

In this paper, we describe findings from a three-year evaluation of a well-developed mathematics professional development program that is commercially available on a wide scale. The professional development is designed to improve teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and to enable them to elicit more student thinking and reasoning during mathematics lessons. Specifically, it focused on helping teachers (a) learn more mathematics, (b) understand how children learn math, (c) use formative assessment to develop insight into what specific students know and do not know, and (d) develop effective classroom instructional strategies that enable student problem solving. Participants included 105 fourth- and fifth-grade teachers teaching in 19 low-income schools within a single district. Teachers were randomly assigned within schools either to a “business as usual” control group or to receive the professional development. The training consisted of a week-long summer institute and four to six in-service days during the school year. The training was run by full-time trained associates. We find some limited evidence of positive impacts on teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching, but no effects on instructional practice or student outcomes.     

美国数据安全政策的演化路径、特征及启示

美国数据安全政策的发展与互联网、数字技术的发展有着密切的联系,数据安全由克林顿时代的网络基础设施保护,到布什时代的网络反恐,再到奥巴马时代的创建网络司令部,美国的数据安全战略经历了一个"从被动预防到主动出击"的演化过程,本文对美国数据安全的政策演化路径进行研究,以期对我国数据安全政策制订予以借鉴。