Teacher Stress Related to Student Mental Health Promotion: the Match Between Perceived Demands and Competence to Help Students with Mental Health Problems

The present study highlights teacher stress related to student mental health promotion through the relationship between perceived competence, perceived responsibility and negative emotions. Data were derived from a mixed methods design, utilizing three focus group interviews (n = 15), followed by survey research (n = 771) amongst Norwegian K–12 teachers. The results suggest that teacher stress emerges chiefly from a mismatch between feeling responsible for and being able to help students with mental health problems. The data also point to the impact of time constraints in school context. Finally, the findings reveal significantly higher levels of perceived responsibility and negative emotions amongst female teachers, and significantly lower levels of perceived responsibility amongst teachers at higher grades.     

What contemporary work are student ratings actually doing in higher education?

It is conventionally assumed that student ratings perform a significant function in driving improvement in pedagogical practices in higher education. As a result, this form of evaluation has gradually become institutionalised in recent decades as an essential proxy for understanding teaching and course quality in universities across the world. However, with the rise of market-based models in higher education and heightened expectations for accountability mechanisms, the role and functional purpose of ratings-based student evaluation have become increasingly confused. This rising ambiguity has created strong tensions between the seminal drive of student ratings as a tool of quality improvement, and the emerging demands for its use as a transparent accountability measure for the comparative assessment of academic performativity. So are student ratings now largely a tool of quality assurance or performance measurement, or do they remain a legitimate tool for pedagogical improvement? This paper reports on a study that responded to this critical question by considering the contemporary work of student ratings in a major Australian university. The outcomes of this research demonstrate that tension between improvement and accountability motives is causing considerable confusion and discord around the role and value of the student voice. It also reveals that academics are tending to discount the often critical insights of students on the implications of their pedagogical practices as a result of the elevating institutional role of student ratings as a proxy for teaching quality. In considering these outcomes, rising levels of academic dissonance around student ratings would suggest a necessity to consider broadened evaluative strategies that are able to more effectively capture the improvement potential offered by the student voice.     

Positionings in an immature triad in teacher education

This article presents and discusses experiences from an intervention project in Norwegian teacher education focusing on a triadic collaboration between student teachers, mentors and lecturers. The aim of the project was to establish a written, digital meeting place supporting the student teachers’ professional development. The question explored in this article is why some of the members in the triad virtually disappeared, and thus why the established digital meeting place collapsed. The findings are discussed through the lenses of positioning theory. Although the members positioned themselves differently, we identified three common traits in their stories: enhanced competition, preference of theory-informed writing, role confusion.     

Teacher liking as an affective filter for the association between student behavior and peer status

This study investigated how peer perceptions of teacher liking and disliking for a student shape students’ social cognitions by moderating associations between the student’s peer-perceived social behavior and peer liking and disliking status. We studied individual teacher liking and disliking as well as classroom norms as moderators of individual and classroom-level behavior-status associations. Peer nominations of (dis)liking, being (dis)liked by the teacher, and prosocial and aggressive behavior were gathered from 1454 students (M_age = 10.60) in 58 fifth-grade classes in the Netherlands. Results from multilevel analyses showed the teacher made a difference in particular for those students who were at-risk of low peer status, that is, those students who were perceived by many of their peers to show aggressive behavior and by few to show prosocial behavior. These students were disliked less and liked more when they were perceived by peers to be less disliked and more liked by the teacher. Furthermore, the amount of disliking associated with overt and relational aggression differed across classrooms, depending on norms of teacher liking. These findings may help teachers to understand and improve an individual student’s peer status, and alter the behavior–status dynamics in their class.     

Introducing veteran critical theory

Research on student veterans is in an infant state. As veterans continue to enroll in institutions of higher education, researchers must explore new ways of knowing student veterans. It is not enough to only describe and model this growing demographic, researchers must also have a tool for criticism and question. The next in an important tradition of emancipatory paradigms, this article suggests a critical theory built on current critical conversations but adapted for the unique characteristics of the student veteran. The article defines the need for a critical theory (Veteran Critical Theory), explains 11 tenets for this new theory, and discusses how these tenets could be used by administrators, faculty, student affairs professionals, and students in the higher education community.     

Teachers’ perspective on institutional barriers to academic entrepreneurship – a case of Uttarakhand state,India

The study explores the institutional factors which influence the impact of education in building academic entrepreneurship in higher educational institutes of Uttarakhand state, India. In order to understand the institutional barriers, the author interviewed 68 senior-level educationists, who were working in the capacity of Director General, Professor, Head, or Director in three different universities or their affiliated institutions. Based on the qualitative data obtained from interviews, we identified five major and four minor factors which were influencing the impact of education in building academic entrepreneurship in the state. The major barriers identified were – poor entrepreneurial ecosystem, poor entrepreneurial orientation, and inclination of universities and institutes to prepare students for jobs, inadequate content of the subject, need for training of entrepreneurship faculty, or specialized entrepreneurship faculty and ineffective teaching methodology. The results so obtained were further reviewed and validated on the basis of past research. The study also takes into account the institutional problems in developing academic entrepreneurship in other developing countries and compares the results. The study will help policy-makers, teachers, and educational institutions to recognize the possible shortfalls in the education system, which eventually result in poor academic entrepreneurship. Suggestions for improvements are included.     

The development of the classroom social climate during the first months of the school year

In this study the mean stability of classroom social climates during the first months of the school year and the deviation of individual classrooms (N = 48) and students (N = 1208) from this general trend were investigated by taping students’ interpersonal perceptions of their teachers. Multilevel growth modeling was used to identify the average development of the classroom social climate and between classroom and student differences in terms of this development. While significant differences between classrooms and students were found, these differences were rather stable over time. Most classrooms showed a slightly u-shaped trajectory. In only very few classrooms the quality of the social climate had increased at the end of the research period as compared to the very first lesson. Differences in the development between classrooms were associated to the emotional distance between teacher and students during the first lesson of the school year.     

高职学生党建工作存在的突出问题及发展对策思考

高等职业技术教育是近年来迅速发展起来的一种高等教育新形式。新形势下,高职学生党建受高等教育大众化和市场经济深入发展的影响,存在一些突出问题,必须站在战略和全局的高度,从创新工作观念、完善工作制度、健全工作机构、丰富工作内容等方面切实采取有效措施,创造性地解决存在的问题。     

促进福建省学生体质与健康水平提升的对策研究

为探寻促进福建省学生体质健康水平提升的策略,应用文献资料法等方法,对2010年全国学生体质与健康调研结果进行分析,结果发现,全国学生的身体素质等总体呈显著下降状态。对此,应当注重提倡健康文明的生活方式,充分发挥体育与健康课程、健康教育课程的作用,注重科学锻炼理念的传输,同时应形成良好的生活习惯,拒绝烟酒,保持良好的睡眠...     

浙江省大学生体育社团的现状及对策研究

通过问卷调查和相关文献分析,发现浙江省大学生体育社团在迅速地发展,其影响力正在不断地扩大,但其中存在的问题也是不容忽视的：学校对体育社团不够重视,缺少引导和扶持;管理机制不完善,活动经费短缺;指导教师偏少,负责人素质不高;对外交流较少,缺乏新鲜元素。针对以上问题提出了相应对策。