Melancholic mothering: mothers,daughters and family violence

Through selected theories of melancholia, this paper seeks to shed some fresh interpretive light on the reproduction and disruption of gender, violence and family turmoil across generations of mothers and daughters. The originality of the paper lies in its exploratory deployment of theories of melancholia to consider issues of women, violence and generation. It addresses these matters through a discussion of the intergenerational emotional archives accumulated by two mother–daughter pairs in relation to their different experiences of sexual and other violence. It shares the mothers’ experiences of violence in their childhood and shows how these help to shape the ways in which they raise their daughters and address the troubles that their daughters experience. Different theories of melancholia assist us to explain the dissimilar emotional dynamics between these mother and daughter pairs. But equally their stories suggest the analytical potential of different theories of melancholia for understanding women’s and girls’ diverse responses to violence. Freud’s, Irigaray’s and Silverman’s constructions of melancholia, which are to some extent based on notions of emptiness, lack and insufficiency, are deployed alongside Eng and Kazanjian’s interpretation of a melancholic state of being which focuses on the creative potential of animating the remains of loss; an interpretation that invokes an agential relationship to the losses that violence provokes. The former help to explain what Eng and Kazanjian might see as the ‘hopeless politics’ associated with certain melancholic responses to violence and the latter help to explain what they might consider more ‘hopeful politics’ associated with responses that mobilise a more agential relationship to loss. Although not subscribing to such a stark binary interpretation, we nonetheless argue for an analysis that acknowledges the different ways that the remains of loss are animated. The paper arises from a wider cross‐generational study in Australia of the lives of educationally, economically and culturally marginalised young women and their mothers.     

Mathematics: a female,male or gender‐neutral domain? A study of attitudes among students at secondary level

The aim of the current study is to investigate whether Swedish secondary school students perceive mathematics as a female, male or gender‐neutral domain. A sample of 1300 students in two age groups, 15‐ and 17‐ years, answered a questionnaire and about 50 students participated in interviews. The main part of the inquiry form consists of Who and mathematics, an attitude scale recently developed by other researchers. The results are analysed with respect to gender, school year and study programme. Gendered attitudes were found among considerable minorities. There is a marked tendency to view mathematics as a symbolically male domain: positive aspects are associated with boys and negative aspects perceived as more female. Older students hold more strongly gendered views than younger. Boys in the science programme have the strongest beliefs of mathematics as a male domain.     

University–School Partnerships in English Pre-service Teacher Education: A Dialogic Inquiry into a Co-teaching Initiative

Evidence has been accumulating for some time about the impact of standards-based education reforms on schools and schooling, but there has been little research investigating the influence of these reforms on university-based initial teacher education (ITE). This article critically inquiries into the effects of these reforms on an ITE co-teaching project where a secondary English teacher in a school was seconded to work for a year as a teacher educator in an Australian university in a praxis-based partnership. Using Cavarero’s framing of ‘who’ and ‘what’ narratives, and Bakhtinian discourse theory, the authors present three autobiographical narratives exploring different perspectives on their experiences in the co-teaching partnership. The article affirms the value of school–university praxis partnerships for speaking back to standards-based reforms, but acknowledges that this speaking back involves complex relational and dialogic work in grappling with institutional and system-wide policies and practices.     

College Student Perceptions of The (In)Appropriateness and Functions of Teacher Disclosure

This study investigated college student perceptions of the (in)appropriateness of instructor disclosures and perceived functions of instructor disclosures. An interpretive analysis of 35 college students identified that family relationships, life experiences and background, and everyday talk and activities were forms of appropriate disclosures; whereas, intimate relationship details, personal problems, personal opinions, and drinking behavior were considered inappropriate topics for instructors to disclose. In terms of the function of instructor disclosures, students perceived that these disclosures worked to humanize instructors, make instructors approachable, and create affect for instructors and courses. Implications and future research are also discussed.     

Parent-teacher conference communication: a guide to integrating family engagement through simulated conversations about student academic progress

Abstract

Teachers regularly communicate with families, yet few candidates are well-prepared for this professional activity. This gap can hinder family–school partnership and pupils’ success. Given that candidates’ opportunities to learn about family engagement (FE) depends on the decisions and values of individual teacher educators, we illustrate how FE can be integrated into an existing educator preparation programme. Specifically, we describe how to design and use simulated parent–teacher conferences (PTCs) to: foster candidates’ conference communication skills; assess their understanding of content knowledge and their ability to plan instruction. Specifically, we designed two simulation tasks that required candidates’ to analyse and respond to a given student assessment profile and then share their interpretation of the information in ways that developed parent–teacher partnership. Modelled after simulation-based medical education, we describe three steps teacher educators can take to integrate simulated PTCs into their existing curriculum. To illustrate how and why simulations impact professional readiness, we also describe the advantages, sequence and psychological processes of simulation training. A sample of candidate profiles across the two tasks are shared to illustrate what candidates take away from their experiences and the kinds of findings faculty may encounter when integrating simulation pedagogy.     

‘And what language do you speak at home?’ Ethnocentrism and cultural openness in teacher–parent interactions in disadvantaged and ethnically segregated schools

ABSTRACT

This article, based on a deep ethnography in schools located in a disadvantaged multicultural context in Geneva (Switzerland), questions the way in which the local school system and teachers comprehend the cultural diversity of students and their parents. Oscillating between recognition and assimilation, teachers publicly adhere to discourses that emphasise cultural diversity, while limiting its expression, especially when a student encounters school difficulties. Teachers’ meetings with parents are significantly influenced by the majority perspective, leaving the parents with little place to express their own needs. Nonetheless, within the conversation, some parents are able to assert practices that differ from those promoted by the host society. Ultimately, it seems that, in the absence of a multicultural position, teachers are limited to adopting hybrid practices that create unease and are evidence of limited understanding of multiculturality.     

Assessment and the co-regulation of learning in the classroom

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the processes of regulation of student learning that are associated with formative assessment in the classroom. It discusses the concept of co-regulation and presents a model of co-regulation developed in a situated perspective on classroom learning. This model conceptualises co-regulated learning as resulting from the joint influence of student self-regulation and of sources of regulation in the learning environment: namely, the structure of the teaching/learning situation, the teacher’s interventions and interactions with students, the interactions between students, and the tools used for instruction and for assessment. Examples of research showing how co-regulation functions are discussed, in particular students’ use of tools for self-assessment and peer assessment, and the role of teacher–student interactions that encourage active student participation in formative assessment.     

Capacity building for school development: current problems and future challenges

This article offers a theoretical discussion on the current problems and future challenges of school capacity building in early childhood education (ECE), aiming to highlight some key areas for future research. In recent years, there has been a notable policy shift from monitoring quality through inspection to improving quality through school capacity building in early childhood institutions in the global discourse for quality. Reflecting this policy shift and its implications on school development, ECE in Hong Kong is used as an illustrative example to deliberate the issues of school capacity building in Chinese educational contexts. We identify three challenging contexts: (1) low professional qualification and minimal teacher education resulting in a deficit approach to processional development, (2) absence of school-based professional learning culture for empowering teachers as internal agents of change, and (3) hierarchical culture within a school and between university and school hindering the process of school capacity building. Corresponding to these challenges, we aim to propose two suggestions, including (1) empowering teachers in ECE through school-based professional learning community and (2) promoting authentic external support in the process of university–school collaboration. Finally, we further propose specific directions for future research on school capacity building in ECE in Hong Kong. In doing so, it will contribute to knowledge-based development in school capacity building in Chinese educational contexts.     

The pedagogical benefits of enacting positive psychology practices through a student–faculty partnership approach to academic development

Academic development that supports the enactment of positive psychology practices through student–faculty pedagogical partnership can increase faculty confidence and capacity in their first year in a new institution. When student partners practice affirmation and encouragement of strengths-based growth, processes of faculty acclimation and self-authoring can be accelerated. This article presents a student–faculty pedagogical partnership program and positive psychology practices that focus on faculty strengths and capacities as the foundation for reinforcing and revising existing pedagogical strategies and for sustaining energy for continued development. It combines collaborative autoethnographic and comparative case study approaches to investigate the pedagogical benefits of these practices.