Are schools ready for Joshua? Dimensions of African-American culture among students identified as having behavioral/emotional disorders

African-American learners often achieve limited academic success in classrooms designed for learners demonstrating challenging behaviors. Self-contained settings are often void of culturally responsive pedagogy. This qualitative study examined the demonstrated behavior of African-American youth in a small urban elementary school setting. Field notes, observations, and interviews were analyzed to examine the demonstration and affirmation of expressive individualism, one of the nine dimensions of African-American culture. Coping strategies were also examined. African-American learners often displayed culturally socialized behaviors that were not affirmed by classroom teachers in academically engaging manners. Their culturally sanctioned modes of expressive individualism were asserted through dissembling, game playing, and defiant coping strategies. As a result of these demonstrated behaviors, students were seldom academically engaged beyond working quietly with a focus on behavioral compliance.     

Multivariate analyses of individual variation in soccer skill as a tool for talent identification and development: utilising evolutionary theory in sports science

The development of a comprehensive protocol for quantifying soccer-specific skill could markedly improve both talent identification and development. Surprisingly, most protocols for talent identification in soccer still focus on the more generic athletic attributes of team sports, such as speed, strength, agility and endurance, rather than on a player’s technical skills. We used a multivariate methodology borrowed from evolutionary analyses of adaptation to develop our quantitative assessment of individual soccer-specific skill. We tested the performance of 40 individual academy-level players in eight different soccer-specific tasks across an age range of 13–18 years old. We first quantified the repeatability of each skill performance then explored the effects of age on soccer-specific skill, correlations between each of the pairs of skill tasks independent of age, and finally developed an individual metric of overall skill performance that could be easily used by coaches. All of our measured traits were highly repeatable when assessed over a short period and we found that an individual’s overall skill – as well as their performance in their best task – was strongly positively correlated with age. Most importantly, our study established a simple but comprehensive methodology for assessing skill performance in soccer players, thus allowing coaches to rapidly assess the relative abilities of their players, identify promising youths and work on eliminating skill deficits in players.     

Coordination of perspective by sixth graders and teacher trainees

Sixth grade students were compared by sex for their performance on two perspective coordination tasks. Responses were compared with understanding of the principle that still water remains invariantly horizontal. Forty-eight randomly selected sixth grade students (24 girls and 24 boys) and 12 college women were individually shown a standardized three-dimensional scene. While seated in a single position, subjects completed two tasks: (1) selecting from a set of 12 pictures (displayed together) the one which could be seen from each of eight positions marked on the displayed scene and (2) choosing the positions from which could be seen eight of the 12 pictures (shown one at a time). Four of the 12 pictures were mirror images which were impossible views. Males outperformed females on both of the coordination-of-perspective tasks. For both males and females, choosing the place was more difficult than choosing the picture. Strong relationships were found between understanding of horizontality and performance on the perspective tasks. Selection of mirror images (impossible views) indicated more understanding of perspective than other, less systematic errors. Finally, female teacher trainees performed only marginally better than sixth grade students, suggesting possible remediation needs.     

An Australian perspective on school leadership preparation and development: credentials or self-management?

This paper provides a review of school leadership preparation and development in Australia through considering the requirements for becoming a principal, how leadership preparation and development occurs, and consideration of recent developments to provide an Australian standard for school leaders. Australian educators have relied mostly on a self-identification and self-managed system in which individuals decide that they want to pursue leadership opportunities and then seek out the support and experiences to help them. Support is available and provided through system, university, and service organization programmes, and the support of colleagues and senior leaders in schools. Whilst there is an extensive range of support provided by systems, universities and service organizations, there is little evidence of their impact on schools. At the school level there needs to be far greater support in identifying and developing leaders. Developments in creating a national leadership standard might lead to some type of credentialing programme that could allow individuals to benchmark their development, and ensure that preparation and support programmes are of the highest quality. An alternative view is to reinforce greater individual responsibility for leadership development and career progress, encourage schools and systems to focus less on individual leadership and more on collective leadership, and consider more innovative ways of providing leadership development.     

Student-centered learning: context needed

Six scholars provide their perspectives in response to Lee and Hannafin’s (Educational Technology Research and Development 64: 707–734, 2016) article describing the Own It, Learn It, Share It design framework. The framework combines constructivist, constructionist, and self-determination theories to address student-centered learning.

     

Empathy in the shift to digital

Educational technology research and development - Four scholars provide their perspectives in response to Tracey and Hutchinson’s (Educ Technol Res Dev 67(5):1259–1272, 2019) article...     

Enriched or latent cosmopolitanism? Identity negotiations of female international students from Japan in the US

Drawing from a qualitative study with 13 female international students from Japan to the United States, this article examines ways in which studying abroad has impacted the students' social and ethnic identities. Findings indicate that while the students did experience social marginalization, they did actively resist it and individually and collectively tried to find ways to integrate in their new social context. Furthermore, and while the students' discussions expressed a strong ethnic identity upon relocation, they did not plan to go back to their native country upon graduation. The discussion centres on the theoretical contributions of this work and attempts to identify directions for institutions of higher education that enroll international students.