Online Faculty Development in the Canary Islands: A Study of E‐mentoring

This article reports on a six‐week online capacity learning and telementoring program at the Universities of the Canary Islands. Firstly, the authors give their view of online training and mentorship perspectives. They structure the argument introducing concepts about the mentor method. Simultaneously, the empirical project is illustrated with a case study: the University Teaching Professional Development (UTPD), a University training program for the development of curriculum and teaching capacities with reference to change within university teaching programs. Finally, the authors discuss the results, which lead to improvement, focusing on the difficulties of learning and practice of capacities within an online training course.     

Channel One Revisited: Prospective Teachers and the Role of American Higher Education

This study examined perceptions of college of education students and their experiences with Channel One, a privately-owned news service used in public education. Given that about one-third of middle and high schoolers in the US view the broadcast every school day, the authors surveyed 172 freshmen to discern their views and attitudes toward Channel One programming and commercials and the role colleges and universities might play in relation to this media service. While most studies on Channel One have been conducted from a K-12 point of view, the goal of this study was to reconsider the topic from the perspective of prospective teachers and post-secondary education. A. J. Angulo  is Assistant Professor of Social Foundations, Winthrop University. He received an Ed.D. and Ed.M. from Harvard University. His research interests include history of education, technology and education, and student rights. Susan K. Green  is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, Winthrop University. She received a Ph.D. in social psychology from Loyola University, Chicago and a Ph.D. in educational psychology and research from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Her interests include classroom assessment, motivational and instructional strategies to promote learning, and multicultural issues in education.     

Impact of a statewide home visiting program to prevent child abuse

OBJECTIVES: To assess the impact of a voluntary, paraprofessional home visiting program in preventing child maltreatment and reducing the multiple, malleable psychosocial risks for maltreatment for which families had been targeted. METHODS: This collaborative, experimental study focused on 6 Healthy Families Alaska (HFAK) programs; 325 families were enrolled in 2000-2001, randomized to intervention and control groups, and interviewed to measure baseline attributes. Follow-up data were collected when children were 2 years old (85% follow-up rate). Outcomes included maltreatment reports, measures of potential maltreatment and parental risks, for example, poor mental health, substance use, and partner violence. HFAK records were reviewed to measure home visiting services. Home visitors were surveyed to measure perceived effectiveness and training adequacy. RESULTS: Parental risks were common at baseline, and one-sixth of families had a substantiated child protective services report in the child's first 2 years of life. There was no overall program effect on maltreatment reports, and most measures of potential maltreatment. Home visited mothers reported using mild forms of physical discipline less often than control mothers. The groups were similar in their use of more severe forms of physical discipline. There was no program impact on parental risks. There was no impact on outcomes for families with a 'high dose' of home visiting. Home visitors often failed to address parental risks and seldom linked families with community resources. Contradictions in the model compromised effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: The program did not prevent child maltreatment, nor reduce the parental risks that had made families eligible for service. Research is needed to develop and test strategies to improve the effectiveness of home visiting.     

Stories in networks and networks in stories: a tri-modal model for mixed-methods social network research on teachers

Social network research on teachers and schools has risen exponentially in recent years as an innovative method to reveal the role of social networks in education. However, scholars are still exploring ways to incorporate traditional quantitative methods of Social Network Analysis (SNA) with qualitative approaches to social network research. This article provides a mixed-methods model for researching teachers' social networks and an empirical example of the model in practice. The model incorporates a tri-modal coding approach that promotes data validity while uncovering network data that some SNA methods may overlook.     

Adolescents and Movie Ratings: Is Psychological Reactance a Theoretical Explanation for the Forbidden Fruit Effect?

Adolescents were recruited to participate in an experiment to assess whether psychological reactance can provide a theoretical explanation for the forbidden fruit effect in the context of movie rating restrictions. In addition to examining if movie ratings served as antecedents to freedom threat perceptions, we investigated the role authoritarian parents had on freedom threat perception and reactance arousal. Results indicated that a movie with an NC-17 rating was perceived as a stronger freedom threat than R and PG-13 rated movies. Interestingly, adolescents who perceived their parents to be authoritarian were less likely to view movie ratings as a freedom threat. As expected, freedom threat perceptions were positively associated with psychological reactance. Reactance, in turn, was positively associated with both first and third person attitudes. The results are discussed with an emphasis on the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.     

On functional observers for linear systems with unknown inputs and HOSM differentiators

The problem of constructing functional observers for linear systems with unknown inputs is considered. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a proper observer (without differentiations) are revisited. A simple and explicit form of a functional observer is presented. It is shown that when such observer is not proper, it is still possible to use the High-Order Sliding Mode differentiator to implement it. Nevertheless, in such case, additional conditions on the system and the unknown input are required.     

Permission-seeking as an agentive tool for transgressive teaching: An ethnographic study of teachers organizing for curricular change

This study describes how a group of teachers in a US public school developed and used permission-seeking moves as strategic and agentic tools to change their school curriculum and challenge norms of teaching. Although the notion of asking permission is typically considered disempowering in educational contexts, this study demonstrates that certain forms of permission-seeking (and giving) can foster collaboration and teacher agency across multiple constituent groups in a school community. This 2-year ethnographic study occurred within a context of a test-driven teaching environment with shifting student racial and economic demographics. Our research offers a reconceptualized theory of permission within a teacher agency framework and new possibilities for practitioners to engage in transgressive teaching with diverse learners in hyper-standardized teaching contexts.     

‘Next thing you know,her hair turned green’: absurdity and uncertainty in high-stakes teacher test space

This article explores what happens behind the closed doors and in the ‘black box’ of high-stakes educational testing. Our specific concern is licensure exams that are often gatekeepers into teacher education programs and the profession. Leveraging the spatial turn across critical social theory and other disciplines, we conceptualize the test space of these exams in order to account for the powerful reach that test companies have into teacher education and the ‘ideal’ restrictive space that test takers navigate. Against this conceptual background, we share findings from a larger qualitative study to illustrate how test takers ‘practice’ test space into something more manageable and familiar by leveraging various affordances presented to them. Overall, our study accounts for the spatial dimension of high-stakes educational tests and initiates productive ways to begin thinking about the structure and agency of these spaces.