What Teachers Take from Professional Development: Cases and Implications

In this article, we report on an 18-month longmathematics professional development projectwith elementary school teachers. Using a modelwe developed, three participant case studieswere analyzed with respect to not only theprofessional development milieu, but also howthese teachers interacted with the professionaldevelopment experience. In particular we foundthat having teachers reflect on new, authenticreform-oriented mathematics learningexperiences leads some teachers to take aninquiry stance concerning their own teaching,resulting in self-sustaining changes in theirmathematics instructional practices. Thisimplies that professional development forelementary mathematics teachers should includechallenging mathematics learning experiencescomplete with opportunities to reflect on personal and professional implications.     

Peer relations across contexts: individual-network homophily and network inclusion in and after school

Peer relations across 2 contexts (in school and after school) were examined for 577 participants, approximately 12 years old, from 3 middle schools in Milan, Italy. The primary research questions were: Do peer networks from different contexts uniquely contribute to explaining variance in individual behavior? Do measures of peer preference and peer network inclusion across contexts uniquely contribute to explaining individual depressive symptoms? Structural equation models showed that both the in-school and the after-school peer networks uniquely contributed to explaining variance in 2 types of individual problem behavior (in-school problem behavior, after-school delinquency), and that similarity with the 2 peer networks varied according to behaviors specific to each context and across gender. Finally, both in-school and after-school peer network inclusion contributed to explaining variance in depressive symptoms, after controlling for classroom peer preference.     

Education and Development: Era of Hope and Disillusionment

It seems almost superfluous to have to highlight formal education as a social and moral institution (historically that has been its main role) but for the fact that after the Second World War greater consciousness on the part of rich industrialized countries spawns fresh concepts and notions that education is an economic enterprise. The human capital concept popularized by the Chicago School of economics as reflected in the works of Schultz and the seminal work of Denison catapulted education into the forefront as an engine of economic development for the so-called Third World countries. Heavy physical capital investment, with the exception of Japan and Germany, which is thought to be a sufficient stimulus for economic development in classical economic theory fails to deliver the goods. The frantic search for an efficacious solution to Third World Poverty unearths the forgotten dimension of educated and trained manpower as the missing variable in the economic development equation. Education becomes the new faith for Third Worlds in their attempts to banish poverty and join the rich industrial clubs. Needless to say, the new faith which holds sway for more than a decade ends in disillusionment (reflected in the Belagio Conference of 1974) for trained manpower is a necessary but not sufficient condition for national development. The complementarity and substitutability of physical and human capital have been overlooked. But whilst the human capital formation theory holds sway, formal education becomes predominently an economic enterprise and correspondingly its function as a social and moral enterprise is reduced in importance.     

Teachers' attributions for students' low achievement: A validation of cooper and good's attributional categories

Teachers' explanations for students' low achievement were reliably classified using the attributional coding system proposed by Cooper and Good (1983). Teachers most frequently attributed low achievement to a typical pattern of low effort. They viewed acquired student characteristics (e.g., low motivation, poor work habits) as more important than either teacher variables or classroom variables in explaining students' low achievement. Implications of these attribution patterns for improving student achievement and for developing student self-esteem are discussed.