Education Commons^™

Insights For Community Outreach Building To Promote Lifelong Learning With Higher Education Alumni In Chile, Paula A. Charbonneau-Gowdy, Héctor A. Magaña

Higher Learning Research Communications

Despite conclusive evidence from high performing Higher Education (HE) institutions worldwide demonstrating the benefits of strong alumni-relations, institutions in many evolving countries often neglect their graduates. And this, despite rapid advances in technology that can support ongoing relations. The objective of our year-long project was to address this neglect. We (re)connected with 220 English Pedagogy alumni through a digital newsletter. The newsletter provided a forum for building community and mediating professional development among graduates and current faculty. Our qualitative mini case study focused on uncovering the emotions, perspectives and needs of former students through the lens of sociocultural and identity …

A Mixed-Methods Study Assessing Special Education Preservice Candidates' Preparedness For Their First Year Of Teaching, Beverly Tillman, Stephen B. Richards, Catherine Lawless Frank

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

This study employed a Likert-type survey,

Praxis/Pathwise

written observations, as well as guided and open-ended reflections to assess the perceptions of preparedness for the first year of teaching for special education student teaching candidates. Cooperating teachers completed the survey and Praxis /Pathwise observations. University supervisors completed Praxis/Pathwise observations and responded to and analyzed guided and open-ended reflections. The survey instrument was based on the research literature and included responsibilities typically required of special educators (e.g., completing paperwork, planning, assessment, etc.). Results indicated general congruence among the three data sources, but also indicated that two cooperating …

Reflective Thinking In Elementary Preservice Teacher Portfolios: Can It Be Measured And Taught?, Rebecca Pennington

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

This study examined whether teacher portfolios can be validly and reliably assessed by investigating the effect of an instructional tool on increasing the level of reflective thinking in elementary preservice teachers’ portfolios. It also examined whether reflective thinking in preservice teachers’ electronic portfolios represented sufficient quality to make them useful in practice. The Rubric for Evaluating Portfolio Reflective Thinking instrument developed for this study demonstrated moderate levels of interrater reliability (r = .66) and sufficient content validity to be used to measure reflective thinking. Also, members of the treatment group scored significantly higher on five of the six portfolio domains …

Paradise Under The Field House Lights: When Rituals And Spectacles Suppress Female Students’ Agency, Carolyn Fortuna

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

I am a teacher-researcher. Like many teachers, I design lesson plans, implement constructivist learning events in the classroom, and grade projects and papers. But I am also a qualitative researcher. I decided to remain in the classroom after obtaining my Ph. D. in education so that I could impact students in ways that I feel are beyond the reach of an administrator. My most important data collection device has always been my low-tech teacher journal. A teacher journal allows me to create an account of classroom life where dialogic discourse, offhand remarks, lesson outlines, administrative sessions, and student social conversations …

Teaching The Harry Potter Generation, Kerr Houston

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

What I would like to offer here, then, is a brief rumination on some of the ways in which the seven Harry Potter novels and the ensuing eight films may have influenced a number of today’s college students. Clearly, this is hardly a rigorously designed or controlled research project, and it is not a report on a project executed in a classroom. Rather, it is an informal set of reflections on a group of texts that have enjoyed an exceptional popularity among an entire generation of students. Certainly, there should always be a place for focused research into pedagogy and …

Immigrant Students And Literacy: Reading, Writing, And Remembering., Patricia Eugenia Venegas

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

Campano’s book offers a one-of-a-kind invitation for teachers to partake in action research as a fertile foundation for inquiry and for the development of new selves and new literacies. Through critical inquiry and interplay between reality and diversity in a “diaspora community” (p. 73). Campano’s work inspires the construction of flexible and collaborative new knowledge—new knowledge that is embedded in the experiences of teachers and students in and out of school, family histories, and students’ cultural identities. Campano’s fifth-grade immigrant students, all from in an urban California school, engage in a collaborative endeavor that provides a framework for new kinds …

Editorial Introduction, Catherine F. Compton-Lilly

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

The Fall 2011 Edition of Networks highlights a rich range of articles and thoughtful teachers’ voices. Of particular interest in this current edition are the reflections of two teachers working in very different contexts. Carolyn Fortuna is an independent scholar reflecting on her experiences working in a public high school. She explores gender construction for students in what might be considered a typical American high school. In particular she explores how the athletic field house, as well as other school spaces, becomes sites for displaying particular ways of being male or female and identifies the performances that are allowed, encouraged, …

Mind The Map: How Thinking Maps Affect Student Achievement, Dan Jacob Long, David Carlson

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

This action research project, conducted in an 8th grade classroom by Daniel Long, investigated how Thinking Maps could be utilized by the students to broaden critical thinking skills and enhance their understanding of the content being presented. The research data was gathered through anonymous student surveys, instructor observation notes and a post-intervention assessment. Students were taught the function and proper construction of all eight Thinking Maps and were encouraged to utilize them on multiple occasions every day. The findings by Long indicated that when students constructed Thinking Maps, they were able to achieve greater understanding than those students who used …

The Sound Of Fury: Teaching, Tempers, And White Privileged Resistance, Tema J. Okun

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

This essay focuses on the resistance of students situated in positions of privilege in classrooms addressing issues of dominance, identity, and oppression related to race and racism. Examining the psycho/social history of two critical aspects of resistance – defensiveness (related to guilt and shame) and denial – the author draws from both practice and theory to explicate the roots of this resistance and offer specific, effective ways to support students in moving through resistance into responsibility.

Putting Partnership At The Centre Of Teachers' Professional Learning In Rural And Regional Contexts: Evidence From Case Study Projects In Tasmania, Sue Stack, Kim Beswick, Natalie Brown, Helen Bound, John Kenny, Joan Abbott-Chapman

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper presents a professional learning (PL) model that emerged from the authors’ involvement with PL processes in several rural and remote schools in the state of Tasmania. As is the case for rural areas generally, young people in rural areas of Tasmania have lower retention rates to Year 12 and lower participation rates in higher education than their urban peers. Schools in these regions typically have less experienced staff, higher staff turnover and reduced access to professional networks compared with urban schools. Four case studies are presented to illustrate the experiences that lead to the partnership model of PL …

The Context For Change: Reconceptualising The 3rs In Education For Indigenous Students, Elizabeth M. Jackson-Barrett

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Abstract

In 2011, three years on from the Apology given by Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd to the Stolen Generations and coupled with the Federal Governments agenda to ‘close the gap’ in education for Aboriginal students, perhaps it is time to retrospectively look at the issues and challenges that have moulded the terrain of Aboriginal education in Western Australia. It is clear that over the last 200 years there has been progress in improving the access of schooling for many Aboriginal students. However the retention and successful completion of compulsory schooling still remain at unacceptable levels. It is these current performance …

Putting ‘Maori’ In The Mainstream: Student Teachers' Reflections Of A Culturally Relevant Pedogogy, Steven S. Sexton

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper reports on student teachers experiences of an education program that was explicitly designed to be grounded in both Kaupapa Māori and mainstream pedagogy. This program started from the Kaupapa Māori view to be Māori as Māori. This was then supported by mainstream epistemology of New Zealand focused good teaching practice. A Kaupapa Māori approach was taken in this qualitative study that used participant driven spiral discourse. The paper suggests that this combined Kaupapa Māori and mainstream approach allowed these student teachers to find their place in education. Conclusions suggest that a culturally relevant pedagogy modeled as good teaching …

Pre-Service Student-Teacher Self-Efficacy Beliefs: An Insight Into The Making Of Teachers, Donna Pendergast, Susanne Garvis, Jayne Keogh

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Pre-service teacher education programs play an important role in the development of beginning teacher self-efficacy and identity. Research suggests that this development is influenced by the ‘apprenticeship of learning’. However, there remains limited research about the self-efficacy beliefs and identity construction of beginning pre-service teachers entering teacher training, and the impact of the education programs on the development of these attributes.

This paper reports on the first phase of a longitudinal study that investigates beginning teacher pre-service teachers’ views of what it is to be a teacher. In 2010, the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001) …

Supporting Quality Teaching With Recognition, Hans A. Andrews

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Abstract

Value has been found in providing recognition and awards programs for excellent teachers. Research has also found a major lack of these programs in both the USA and in Australia. Teachers receiving recognition and awards for their teaching have praised recognition programs as providing motivation for them to continue high-level instruction. Motivational theories provide a solid foundation for these programs. Teacher educators should find ‘recognition’ as an important part of their curriculum in terms of teaching the research behind motivational theories. They can also encourage K-12 schools to provide recognition to the excellent teachers working with university teacher educators …

Teacher Professional Standards, Accountability, And Ideology: Alternative Discourses, Katarina Tuinamuana

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Teacher professional standards and accountability are today writ large on the landscape of both schooling and teacher education practice around the world. This paper explores some of the related debates through a discussion of four discourses on teacher professional standards: namely, discourses of commonsense, professionalism and quality, managerialism/performativity, and strategic manoeuvring. It is argued that each of these discourses legitimises particular understandings of standards and quality, illustrating the competing set of lenses through which they are viewed, as well as the broader ideologies from which they emerge, including neoliberalism and technical rationality. These discourses also represent the interpretive practice that …

Preparing The Australian Early Childhood Workforce For Rural And Remote Settings: A Review Of The Literature, Nicole C. Green, Andrea Nolan

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This article presents the findings of a literature review of research on teacher preparation for rural settings. In the past there has been little or no preparation of teachers for rural teaching, with the emphasis placed on supporting beginning teachers once they commenced (Baills, Bell, Greensill & Wilcox, 2002; Howe, 2006); now there is a strong movement to prepare preservice teachers adequately before their first teaching appointment. However, what has become clear is that the focus of research has been predominantly on primary and secondary education. In our search we have not been able to identify a substantial body of …

Peeping Into The Learning World Of Secondary Teacher Trainees: Can Their Academic Success Be Predicted?, Mamta Garg

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The study investigated the styles of learning and thinking, study habits, achievement motivation of teacher trainees along with their attitude towards teaching and perception for B.Ed. course. It also explored the predictors that may determine the academic success of these pre-service teachers. The data were analyzed by employing product moment correlation, factor analysis and multiple regression. Findings showed that a total of 29.7% variance in marks in theory papers may be explained a total of 29.7% variance was explained by eight measures whereas five measures contributed towards the explanation of 29.5% variance in skills in teaching. But only three predictors …

A Qualitative Study Of The Teaching Of Modern Greek In Western Australia Under The 'Seconded Teachers From Greece Scheme': Implications For Other Similar Schemes, Angela Evangelinou-Yiannakis, Thomas Anthony O'Donoghue

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The aim of the study reported in this paper was to develop an understanding of how the key stakeholders in Western Australia (WA) 'dealt with' the teaching of Modern Greek (Greek) as a second language under the 'Seconded Teachers from Greece Scheme' (STGS). It addressed a deficit in research in the field not only in relation to WA, but Australia-wide. We report that the stakeholders moved through three stages, namely, the stage of idealism, the stage of conflict, and the stage of cooperation. The study has implications for the development of policy, practice, and future research for the STGS and …

Teacher Education To Meet The Challenges Posed By Child Sexual Abuse, Ben Mathews

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The phenomenon of child sexual abuse has significant implications for teachers’ pre-service training and professional development. Teachers have a pedagogical role in dealing with abused children, and a legal and professional duty to report suspected child sexual abuse. Teachers require support and training to develop the specialised knowledge and confidence needed to deal with this complex context. This article explains the social context of child sexual abuse, its health and educational consequences, and the legal context, showing why teachers require this specialised training. It then reports on findings from an Australian study into the amount of training received by teachers …

In-Service Teacher Education And Scholar Innovation: The Semantics Of Action And Reflection On Action As A Mediation Device, Fátima Pereira

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper presents and discusses the results of a research project in Education Sciences, which aimed at identifying and understanding the effects of in-service teacher education carried out in schools, on the educational practices of a school of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education (CBE). The training was organized with small project groups consisting of six teachers and a trainer, and lasted three years. The present study analyzed the narratives of the educational practices of teachers and of reflection in small groups, from one of the Project groups. The analysis highlighted the importance of the semantics of action and reflection …

Improving Teacher Education Programs, Kelly Harding, Jim Parsons

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In this paper, the authors review current practices in pre-service teacher education. They suggest that radical improvements are possible and that, if practiced, would help mediate many of the pressures young teachers face. To do so, the authors: 1) outline the experiences of young teachers to consider how teachers might thrive in a difficult vocation; 2) share recent research in the area of in-service teacher professional learning (including their own) as a way to inform teacher education programs; and 3) to use these research findings to suggest possible changes and improvements to pre-service teacher education programs. Synthesizing the research, the …

Exploring Intercultural Competence: A Service-Learning Approach, Donna Tangen, K. Louise Mercer, Rebecca Spooner-Lane, Erika Hepple

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study explored the developing intercultural competence of fourth-year Australian education pre-service teachers through a core unit of study on inclusive education, following a service-learning pathway. The Australian pre-service teachers volunteered to be ‘of service’ to a cohort of second-year Malaysian pre-service teachers studying in Australia in a transnational twinning program. Students participated in a Patches program which included writing ‘patches’ (reflections) and engaging in social exchanges. Data were gathered from focus group interviews, written reflection logs and Patches writing books and were analysed through Butin’s (2005) four-lenses of service-learning: technical, cultural, political and post-modern lenses. Data revealed that initially …

Rubbing Off The Corners: The Rite Of Passage Of The Teacher Trainee In 20th Century New Zealand, Teresa Ball

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Abstract: This paper investigates how, in the early 20th Century training colleges of New Zealand, student teachers actively constituted themselves through internalising the norms imposed upon them by the educational authorities. It explores how their training resulted in "rubbing off the corners" so that they could be ethically and pedagogically transformed into the ideal teacher. The result of this was the emergence of a disciplined body of conforming individuals who could implement the state's moral and pedagogical imperatives. This occurred through a three-phase rite of passage: the separation of trainees from their original society; a transition in the enclosed world …

Let A Thousand Teachers Bloom. A Response To "Creating Communities", David L. Keiser Phd

Democracy and Education

Public education in the United States is nominally inclusive and open to all, but is also nuanced and complicated, particularly for students with special learning needs or for English language learners. For refugee students, who may also belong to either or both these two groups, the challenge can be compounded by previous traumas to themselves and their families. Roxas’s description of teacher Patricia Engler illustrates how complicated, but ultimately doable, is the work of educating refugee youth. The key strategy that the article illustrated was the need for attention to connections between school and home life. The students experienced these …

Table Of Contents - Fall 2011, Fort Hays State University College Of Education

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

Academic Leadership Journal Fall 2011 table of contents

Barriers To Teacher Collegiality, Madiha Shah

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2010) there is a significant disparity in life expectance rates between Caucasian males and ethnic minority males in the United States, resulting from factors that include nutrition. While the employment outlook for dietitians and nutritionists is expected to grow by 9.24% through 2018, to approximately 65,000, the percentage of self-employed professionals within the sector is expected to decrease slightly from 8.81% to 8.49% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010).

Career Satisfaction Of Public Secondary School Teachers In Pakistan, Azhar Chaudhary

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

Strong and healthy collegial relationships among educators is believed to be a vital element in enhancing school effectiveness and school improvement. Numerous benefits from teacher collegiality have been reported as evidence of the need for building a more effective collegial culture in schools. Regrouping among teachers to promote collaboration in teaching and new configurations of teacher collegiality constitute integral parts of constructive schools (Johnson, 1990). However, in spite of its numerous benefits, collegiality is still a rare element in most schools (Bruffee, 1999; Heider, 2005). This article elucidates some of the common barriers to collegiality among school teachers.

An Opportunity For Higher Education: Using Social Entrepreneurship Instruction To Mitigate Social Problems, Matthew Kenney

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

Ten elementary school teachers and one Spanish teacher enrolled in Multicultural Children’s and Adolescent Literature expecting to develop a long list of books for their classroom libraries that featured people with brown and black faces. Generally, coming into the course, their primary criterion for appropriate multicultural literature was that it included characters of color. These teachers, students in a graduate reading program, noted repeatedly in course reflection papers and online discussions that they never considered issues of power, privilege, and authenticity in the media in general and in literature in particular prior to their experience in the course. By the …

Modeling Shared Governance At The School And Department Level, Charles Harrington, Martin Slann

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

The article explores social capital and culturally responsive leadership theories as a means to understand and bridge differences that arise in diverse educational settings for public school leaders. Issues explored include those related to the educational histories and cultural heritages that students and stakeholders bring with them to the educational setting. More specifically, the article illuminates how the merging of social capital and culturally responsive leadership theories as a conceptual framework for leadership can lead to not only student achievement, but also positive social networking and relationships among school leaders, teachers, and students. Emphasis is placed on the notion that …

Communicative Functions Of Repair On Nigerian Students’ Participation In Computer Studies, Alaba Agbatogun

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

Doctorate programs in educational leadership have been criticized in recent years for failing to prepare their graduates to effectively serve as instructional leaders in the nation’s schools. Criticisms have included ambiguity of purpose and research foci, weak admission and graduation requirements, irrelevant curriculum, and the lack of applied practice. The purpose of this study was to analyze specific characteristics of thirteen highly ranked applied doctorate programs in educational leadership. Findings revealed that touchstone doctorate programs display many of the features that have been criticized, and that they are largely similar in structure and foci to lower ranked programs.