From safe spaces to communities of disagreement

The idea of the classroom as a ‘safe space’ has been popular in education for at least two decades. More recently, the term has also been used by religious education scholars not least in the wake of the use of the term in the influential Council of Europe publication ‘Signposts’. In this article, I want to question the usefulness of the term ‘safe space’ within RE. The argument is not against many of the pedagogical aims and strategies that are referred to by the term ‘safe space’. However, the term is ambiguous, fraught with politicised controversy and promises more than in can deliver. These problems cannot be easily fixed by defining the term anew. The article is not only critical in its aim. It presents an alternative strategy. In the conclusion of the article, I suggest construing the RE classroom as a community of disagreement.     

Measuring the Diversity Inclusivity of College Courses

Most studies of curricular diversity have focused on the effects of participation in diversity courses on student outcomes. Though the results have been positive, these studies have used limited measures of curricular diversity and there is a great need for a complimentary body of research demonstrating what faculty and what types of courses are more likely to include diversity. This study relies on 12 diversity inclusivity items derived from a comprehensive model of how diversity is included into a course to investigate how much diversity is being included in collegiate courses and what predicts diversity inclusivity, as measured by two scales: diverse grounding and inclusive learning. The results, based on 7,101 responses from faculty participating in the 2007 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, suggest that most faculty are including diversity in their courses in some way, but that women and faculty of color tend to include diversity to a greater extent than their colleagues. Also, courses taught in the soft fields are more likely to be inclusive of diversity.     

Gender Gaps in Collegiate Teaching Style: Variations by Course Characteristics

Using data from over 9,000 faculty members that participated in the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE), this study examined the moderating role a range of course characteristics played on the effects of gender on the percentage of class time spent on various activities, a measure of teaching style. Results revealed gender differences, but that the gaps between men and women in lecturing and active classroom practices varied by disciplinary area, course level, and the number of times a course had been taught by the same instructor. The results confirm that gender effects depend on context, which implies that efforts to improve teaching and learning must also adapt to the instructional context.     

Antecedents and behavior-problem outcomes of parental monitoring and psychological control in early adolescence

The early childhood antecedents and behavior-problem correlates of monitoring and psychological control were examined in this prospective, longitudinal, multi-informant study. Parenting data were collected during home visit interviews with 440 mothers and their 13-year-old children. Behavior problems (anxiety/depression and delinquent behavior) were assessed via mother, teacher, and/or adolescent reports at ages 8 through 10 years and again at ages 13 through 14. Home-interview data collected at age 5 years were used to measure antecedent parenting (harsh/reactive, positive/proactive), family background (e.g., socioeconomic status), and mother-rated child behavior problems. Consistent with expectation, monitoring was anteceded by a proactive parenting style and by advantageous family-ecological characteristics, and psychological control was anteceded by harsh parenting and by mothers' earlier reports of child externalizing problems. Consistent with prior research, monitoring was associated with fewer delinquent behavior problems. Links between psychological control and adjustment were more complex: High levels of psychological control were associated with more delinquent problems for girls and for teens who were low in preadolescent delinquent problems, and with more anxiety/depression for girls and for teens who were high in preadolescent anxiety/depression.     

The Effects of Discipline on Deep Approaches to Student Learning and College Outcomes

“Deep learning” represents student engagement in approaches to learning that emphasize integration, synthesis, and reflection. Because learning is a shared responsibility between students and faculty, it is important to determine whether faculty members emphasize deep approaches to learning and to assess how much students employ these approaches. This study examines the effect of discipline on student use of and faculty members’ emphasis on deep approaches to learning as well as on the relationships between deep approaches to learning and selected educational outcomes. Using data from over 80,000 seniors and 10,000 faculty members we found that deep approaches to learning were more prevalent in Biglan’s soft, pure, and life fields compared to their counterparts. The differences were largest between soft and hard fields. We also found that seniors who engage more frequently in deep learning behaviors report greater educational gains, higher grades, and greater satisfaction with college, and that the strength of these relationships is relatively consistent across disciplinary categories.     

School Lunch Matters: Encountering the New Jim Crow and the Anthropocene

This presidential lecture to the American Educational Studies Association argues that school lunch matters as education, not merely as management, especially within the ethically challenging contexts of the New Jim Crow (with its school-to-prison pipeline) and the Anthropocene—both wicked problems. The educational significance of children's foodways, school food, and school lunch has deep roots in early modern, as well as high modern thought, and within the past decade a new educational studies scholarship on school lunch has emerged concurrently with Michelle Obama's leadership for National School Lunch Program reforms. This study invites a wide range of educational studies scholarship by mapping school lunch matters that might frame new curriculum theorizing with the purpose of developing leaders' ethical responses to both the school-to-prison pipeline and the environmental crisis. This conceptual frame focuses a prospectus for educational creativity on school lunch's health matters, choice matters, table matters, earth matters, aesthetics matters, kitchen matters, community matters, service matters, and study matters.     

Parents’ and Early Childhood Educators’ Attitudes and Practices in Relation to Children’s Outdoor Risky Play

This study contributes to the understanding of early childhood educators’ and parents’ attitudes and practices in relation to outdoor risky play for children. This study included 26 early childhood educators and 112 parents in rural and metropolitan areas of Australia and the United States. Participants completed an online survey about their perspectives and practices related to the provision of opportunities for children to engage in outdoor risky play. Questions also investigated reasons that prevented participants from providing such opportunities for children. Findings indicated that most educators thought it was important for children to be provided opportunities for outdoor risky play and did provide appropriate activities. Types of outdoor risky play opportunities fell into the categories of supporting large motor skills, supporting free exploration of the environment, and supporting assessment of risk. However, educators located in Australia rated outdoor risky play opportunities as significantly more important compared to educators in the US. Many parents also felt outdoor risky play was important and provided appropriate activities. Opportunities provided by parents fell into the same categories as educators, with additional features of nervousness and a desire to avoid hovering. Many parents identified the young age of the child and safety concerns as barriers. Implications for research and practice are discussed.