bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What Large-Scale, Survey Research Tells Us about Teacher Effects on Student Achievement: Insights from the Prospects Study of Elementary Schools
Authors: Rowan Brian , Correnti Richard , Miller Robert J.
Published: February 2022

This paper discusses conceptual and methodological issues that arise when educational researchers use data from large-scale, survey research to examine the effects of teachers and teaching on student achievement. Using data from Prospects: The Congressionally Mandated Study of Educational Growth and Opportunity 1991–1994, we show that researchers’ use of different statistical models has led to widely varying interpretations about the overall magnitude of teacher effects on student achievement. However, we conclude that in well-specified models of academic growth, teacher effects on elementary school students’ growth in reading and mathematics achievement are substantial (with d-type effect sizes ranging from .72 to .85). We also conclude that various characteristics of teachers and their teaching account for these effects, including variation among teachers in professional preparation and content knowledge, use of teaching routines, and patterns of content coverage, with effect sizes for variables measuring these characteristics of teachers and their teaching showing d-type effect sizes in the range of .10. The paper concludes with an assessment of the current state of the art in large-scale, survey research on teaching. Here, we conclude that survey researchers must simultaneously improve their measures of instruction while paying careful attention to issues of causal inference.
“Passing Through” a Western-Democratic Teacher Education: The Case of Israeli Arab Teachers
Authors: Eilam Billie
Published: February 2022

The Israeli educational milieu contains two different cultures with separate educational systems: the Arab culture, distinguished by its traditional and collectivist orientation despite undergoing a process of modernization, and the Jewish Western-democratic, individualistic culture. This study describes a unique multiculturalistic phenomenon whereby Arab students, who have been educated in the context of the Arab family and school culture, “pass through” a Western-oriented teacher education program and then return to teach in their own culture. The study traces the development of awareness regarding the impact of cultural factors on education among several groups: Arab (and some Jewish) teacher trainees prior to, during, and after their university training; experienced Arab teachers working in the field; and Arab experts in education. The study focuses on the Arab teacher trainees’ ability to make sense of the knowledge presented in the training program, in light of their own prior knowledge and beliefs as well as other difficulties related to studying in a foreign language and unfamiliar style. Changes in the Arab teacher trainees’ beliefs and attitudes are traced as they construct bodies of knowledge along the path toward becoming teachers, and their notions of how the newly acquired knowledge can be applied in the Arab community are also investigated.
What Counts as Teacher Research? Investigating the Scientific and Mathematical Ideas of Children from Culturally Diverse Backgrounds
Authors: Ballenger Cynthia , Rosebery Ann S.
Published: February 2022

In this article we address questions raised by the research methods used in teacher research by exploring a particular approach to teacher research. This approach is based in teachers’ concerns with underachieving children, particularly those who come from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. It grows out of the work of the Brookline Teacher Research Seminar (BTRS), the Chèche Konnen Center (CKC), and the Prospect Center and Archives (Prospect). We report on a conference where experienced teacher researchers from these groups met with newcomers to explore classroom data together. Our goal is to describe what the experienced practitioners had to say to the newcomers.
Who Values the GED? An Examination of the Paradox Underlying the Demand for the General Educational Development Credential
Authors: Smith Thomas M.
Published: February 2022

The General Educational Development (GED) credential is the most widely recognized form of alternative secondary certification in the United States today. Unlike other educational credentials, however, GED certification does not require school attendance or mastery of any specific curriculum. Although the requirements for certification are notably different from traditional high school diplomas, the GED is widely viewed as the functional equivalent of the high school diploma. While surveys of employers have shown that they generally consider the GED equivalent to the traditional high school diploma in hiring decisions, much of the literature on the economic returns to GED attainment indicate that these returns are significantly below those of traditional high school graduates and not much higher than those of other dropouts. This article examines the paradox of strong individual demand and strong institutional support for this credential despite educational and economic returns markedly lower than those of traditional high school graduates. The literature on the history of the GED, as well as the cognitive, educational, and economic outcomes associated with it, is examined through the lenses of several economic and sociological paradigms. This article suggests that the GED's potential as a signal of a recipient's basic cognitive skills may be negated by the inability of a test-based credential to signal at least minimal internalization of institutional norms, particularly those most valued in the workplace. The analysis suggests that the GED serves as a systemic safety valve for a system with comparatively high dropout rates. The GED program is a low-cost way to integrate hundreds of thousands of off-track individuals back into the mainstream of society, while at the same time providing an efficient means for the educational system to appear to meet its goals of equality of educational opportunity.
Effects of Early Acceleration of Students in Mathematics on Attitudes toward Mathematics and Mathematics Anxiety
Authors: Ma Xin
Published: February 2022

This study examined the effects of early acceleration of students in mathematics on the development of their attitudes toward mathematics and mathematics anxiety across junior and senior high school. Data were derived from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses showed that attitudes declined in the same degree between accelerated and nonaccelerated gifted and honors students, but declined significantly faster in accelerated than nonaccelerated regular students. Accelerated gifted students did not increase their anxiety. Anxiety grew at a similar rate between accelerated and nonaccelerated honors students, but accelerated regular students increased their anxiety significantly faster than nonaccelerated regular students. Once students were accelerated, most variation in rates of attitude and anxiety change was at the student rather than school level. Racial/ethnic background was the most important factor influencing rate of change at the student level. School contextual characteristics were major factors influencing rate of change at the school level.
Inside Teacher Community: Representations of Classroom Practice
Authors: Little Judith Warren
Published: February 2022

Researchers posit that conditions for improving teaching and learning are strengthened when teachers collectively question ineffective teaching routines, examine new conceptions of teaching and learning, find generative means to acknowledge and respond to difference and conflict, and engage actively in supporting one another's professional growth. Yet relatively little research examines the specific interactions and dynamics by which professional community constitutes a resource for teacher learning and innovations in teaching practice. In particular, few studies go “inside teacher community” to focus closely on the teacher development opportunities and possibilities that reside within ordinary daily work. This paper draws on intensive case studies of teacher knowledge, practice, and learning among teachers of mathematics and English in two high schools to take up the problem of how classroom teaching practice comes to be known, shared, and developed among teachers through their out-of-classroom interactions.
Race Discrimination in Education: A Legal Perspective
Authors: Ryan James E.
Published: February 2022

This paper was prepared for the Panel on Methods for Assessing Discrimination, National Academy of Sciences, Committee on National Statistics. It describes the formal legal definitions of race discrimination in education, demonstrates how those definitions are applied in various contexts, and highlights the role that social science evidence has played and could play in the cases. The paper argues that what currently counts as race discrimination in education and how such discrimination is proven are, from a legal perspective, at once both straightforward and complex questions. They are straightforward because the formal legal definitions are simple enough to grasp. The questions are complex because at times the formal definitions of race discrimination are modified in their application, and also because some important questions about how to apply those definitions in a particular case or context remain unanswered. The paper offers some suggestions as to how these lingering questions could be answered and describes the limited role that social science evidence could play in shaping the answers. It also highlights the irony that, under the current legal definitions of race discrimination, it is much easier to block voluntary integration efforts designed to assist minority (and white) students than it is to block practices that unintentionally disadvantage minority students.
Measuring Discrimination in Education: Are Methodologies from Labor and Markets Useful?
Authors: Holzer Harry J. , Ludwig Jens
Published: February 2022

This paper reviews the methodologies most frequently used by social scientists when measuring discrimination in housing and labor markets and assesses their potential usefulness for analyzing discrimination in education. We begin by briefly reviewing what economists typically mean by racial discrimination in housing and labor markets and note that the standard definition is somewhat more complicated in the case of education. We then review four methodologies—standard statistical methods (e.g., multiple regression), methods using more complete data (e.g., productivity vs. wages or applications for jobs/housing vs. acceptances), experimental/audit methods, and natural experiments based on actual policy changes. The strengths and weaknesses of the four methods when used on housing and labor markets are assessed. We then consider the extent to which each of the methods can be applied to education and the potential usefulness and limitations of trying to do so. We conclude that each of the four methods has some potential uses in analyzing discrimination in education.
Revisiting Classroom Authority: Theory and Ideology Meet Practice
Authors: Pace Judith L.
Published: February 2022

What kinds of authority relations exist in today's high schools? Throughout the last century, educational thinkers from different ideological camps have strongly advocated particular kinds of authority to promote educational aims. However, in the last few decades, sociologists of education have not adequately studied classroom authority (Hum, 1985). Drawing on an interpretive study of classroom authority relations in a U.S. metropolitan high school, this article describes and analyzes the character of these relations, and their connection to social theory and educational ideologies. It reveals that conservative, bureaucratic, progressive, and radical positions all contribute to commonsense understandings, or taken for granted notions, that produce confused and shifting enactments of authority in classrooms. While they facilitate teachers’ and students’ modus vivendi, these ambiguous, hybridized versions (Kliebard, 1986; Page, 1999) of authority may not adequately serve educational purposes.
The Functions of Teacher Emotions: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Authors: Winograd Ken
Published: February 2022

This is a self-study of an elementary teacher's emotions during the year he took a sabbatical from a position as an education professor. He worked as an elementary classroom teacher, and he kept a journal of his daily experience as a teacher of a nongraded primary class. With the journal as a data source, the study examined the feeling “rules” for teachers, the functional and dysfunctional dimensions of teacher emotions, and the strategies teachers use to engage in emotional labor. The findings show both functional and dysfunctional dimensions of the teacher's emotional experience. The article suggests that the self-accusatory stance of teachers diverts teachers’ attention from structural problems in their working conditions and, instead, focuses attention on the inadequacies of teachers as individuals. Furthermore, the paper suggests that it is from the collective naming and examination of emotions that teachers may be able to learn to accept and understand the darker emotions of teaching, to understand the relationship between emotions and social structure, as well as learn to use emotions such as anger and disgust as catalysts for social activism and change.
“Especially Special”: Learning about Jews in a Fundamentalist Christian School
Authors: Schweber Simone , Irwin Rebekah
Published: February 2022

Based on the premise that private religious schools function sociologically as crucibles for collective memory work, this study examined the image of Jews conveyed through a Holocaust unit as taught at a fundamentalist Christian school. After presenting an analysis of both the enacted and experienced curricular dimensions of the unit, we argue that studies of abstracted others—others studied about rather than interacted with—within communal religious schools potentially pose problematic implications for students’ multicultural sensibilities. Moreover, we claim that, given these implications, religion, as a category, ought to be both more consistently included within multicultural education frameworks and more closely examined within lived, classroom practice.
We've Come a Long Way—Maybe: New Challenges for Gender Equity in Education
Authors: Spencer Renée , Porche Michelle V. , Tolman Deborah L.
Published: February 2022

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between school-wide gender equity efforts and seventh grade girls’ and boys’ educational outcomes and psychological functioning. In this paper, we detail the components of the study, which included documenting that this school did in fact have a gender equitable environment; measuring students’ perceptions of gender equity in their school experience, academic achievement, self-esteem, and gender ideologies; and conducting classroom observations, focus groups, and individual interviews with a subset of this sample. Our findings from these efforts yielded an unexpected and intriguing contradiction. Overwhelmingly, teachers and students reported in surveys that they perceived their school to be gender fair. Yet classroom observations and interviews with students bring into view serious differentials in how boys and girls experienced, behaved and were treated in their classrooms. The students read these differences in classroom behaviors as reflecting inherent or natural differences between boys and girls; thus, these differences were experienced as equitable. The article concludes with a discussion of how these findings raise questions about, and issue challenges for, current conceptions of gender equity in schools.
A Reconceptualization of Educational Foundations
Authors: Soltis Jonas F.
Published: February 2022

Soltis claims that the members of any profession need a “professional literacy” of concepts and concerns held in common if they are to communicate effectively in debate and cooperative problem-solving. Properly conceived, he argues, social and psychological foundations instruction can provide teachers with a common background of theoretical frameworks, major concepts, alternative models, and historical precedents necessary for shared understanding and communication. Toward this end, Soltis suggests several fundamental educational questions that each prospective teacher should be equipped to reflect upon in informed ways.
Some Maxims for Learning and Instruction
Authors: Anderson Richard C. , Armbruster Bonnie B.
Published: February 2022

This article describes some maxims derived from recent theory in learning and instruction and from reflection on excellent practice, explaining and illustrating them using examples from a successful literacy training program, Reading Recovery. Anderson and Armbruster speculate on how the maxims could be applied to teacher education — not only to improve the training of prospective teachers, but also to improve their ability to teach others.
The Fourth R: The Arts and Learning
Authors: Darby Jaye T. , Catterall James S.
Published: February 2022

In this article, the authors bring together the central ideas of the prominent thinkers in arts education and arts in learning to construct a comprehensive case for the importance of the arts in every child's education. The roles of the arts in cognition, equitable access to meaning, student motivation, and cultural representation and understanding are explored. Illustrations are drawn from visible national projects translating the ideas into practice. Teacher voices on the power of the arts in the. learning of their children are introduced.
On the Private Life of a Public Philosopher: John Dewey in Love
Authors: Westbrook Robert B.
Published: February 2022

John Dewey's private life has been relatively unexplored by biographers, historians, and students of his philosophy, in large measure because the sources are so limited. Yet there are aspects of his private experience that are available to us, and analyzing them more closely than we have might well serve to enhance our understanding of the man and his thought. This article argues that one of the most significant and best documented moments in Dewey's private life, his love affair with writer Anzia Yezierska, sheds considerable light not only on Dewey's character but also on the strengths and weaknesses of his philosophical conception of the moral life.
Goals 2000: Framework for the New Educational Federalism
Authors: Cookson Peter W.
Published: February 2022

The passage of GOALS 2000 represents an important victory for the “cosmopolitan centralists” of educational policy who advocate a stronger role for the federal government in improving schools. This article explores the principle elements of GOALS 2000: the origins of the “New Federalism”, the education legislative record of the Clinton administration, and a discussion of what further efforts should be made if the needs of American children are to be met.
Race, Social Class, and Educational Reform in an Inner-city School
Authors: Anyon Jean
Published: February 2022

Drawing on an assessment of reform efforts in one school in an urban ghetto in a large district in the Northeast, this article describes processes and events that illustrate how social manifestations of racial and social class status can combine to vitiate efforts at school reform. I argue that three factors—sociocultural differences among participants in reform, an abusive school environment, and educator expectations of failed reform—occurring in a minority ghetto where the school population is racially and economically isolated constitute some of the powerful and devastating ways that concomitants of race and social class can intervene to determine what happens in inner-city schools, and in attempts to improve them.
A Democratic Art: Community Murals as Educator
Authors: Conrad David R.
Published: February 2022

The community mural movement serves an important educational role by articulating, clarifying, and expanding community values. Through examining the community mural movement as democratic art and education, I argue that murals can be aesthetically challenging and ask profound questions at the same time. I explore the history of the modern mural movement and discuss murals that serve to educate artists and community alike.

I show that community murals are expressive as well as didactic, that they stimulate community pride and commitment to justice while teaching outsiders about the struggles of traditionally oppressed people. Murals have immense capacity to expand multicultural understanding at a time when multiculturalism is central to the educational process.

The community mural movement in the last thirty years has moved in a democratic direction by involving artists and neighborhood residents in collaborative public endeavors. I conclude that if the muralists and scholars examined in this article are taken seriously, it is difficult to deny that community murals are a democratic art form and that community murals have great educational potential.
What Price Inclusion?
Authors: Siegel Harvey
Published: February 2022

In this article I first examine the nature of the case for regarding inclusion as a conversational and theoretical ideal. I argue that inclusion is best understood as a moral rather than an epistemological virtue. I then try to show that embracing inclusion as a conversational and theoretical ideal does not require either the rejection of the universal, or the rejection of scholarly standards.
Ruling Out Rules: The Evolution of Deregulation in State Education Policy
Authors: Fuhrman Susan H. , Elmore Richard F.
Published: February 2022

In the late 1980s and mid-1990s, states began working to decrease the level of regulation of public education. Operating under the assumption that greater school autonomy is an important spur to school improvement, policymakers tried a variety of approaches to regulatory flexibility.

This article examines the evolution of deregulation from limited waiver programs to charter programs and new performance-based accountability systems that include broad-scale deregulation. Early deregulation programs were so limited in design that they had very modest results, but policymakers are finding expanded efforts very difficult to achieve. Many of the same political forces and habits of practice that limited early efforts continue to pose barriers to deregulation. Underlying the barriers is a historic, continuing uncertainty about the state role and about how states should relate to districts of varying types.
Parental Involvement in Children's Education: Why Does it Make a Difference?
Authors: Hoover-Dempsey Kathleen V. , Sandler Howard M.
Published: February 2022

We assert that the most important questions concerning parental involvement in children's education address why parents choose to become involved and why their involvement, once underway, often positively influences educational outcomes. We present a model suggesting that parents become involved primarily because (a) they develop a personal construction of the parental role that includes participation in their children's education, (b) they have developed a positive sense of efficacy for helping their children succeed in school, and (c) they perceive opportunities or demands for involvement from children and the school. Parents then choose specific forms of involvement in response to the specific domains of skill and knowledge they possess, the total demands on their time and energy, and specific requests for involvement from children and the school. The model suggests that parental involvement then influences children's developmental and educational outcomes through such mechanisms as modeling, reinforcement, and instruction, as mediated by the parent's use of developmentally appropriate activities and the fit between parental activities and the school's expectations. The major educational outcomes of the involvement process are children's development of skills and knowledge, as well as a personal sense of efficacy for succeeding in school. Major implications of the model for research and practice are discussed.
Researching With: Ethical and Epistemological Implications of Doing Collaborative, Change-oriented Research with Teachers and Students
Authors: Clark Caroline T. , Moss Pamela A.
Published: February 2022

In this article, we examine the ethical and epistemological implications of shifting from a strictly teacher-centered group to include students in a collaborative co-researching experience. For the past four years, we have worked collaboratively with teachers at City High School examining collections of student writing for assessment and accountability purposes. While students and their writing have been at the center of our work, our primary research partners have been the teachers at this urban, comprehensive secondary school. Interested in learning more about how students at City High perceive and use literacy, we are now engaged in a project in which students are co-researching their own literacy practices. This move implies a shift in partnerships, bringing students into this collaborative relationship and making them our primary research partners. Drawing from the literature on ethics in qualitative fieldwork, we contrast how ethical issues are constructed in the field with more regulatory constructions of “ethics.” Then, extending this further to the context of our work at City High, we consider the ethical and epistemological (validity) issues that are raised by such methodological choices. Illustrated with excerpts from student meetings and writing, this study marks a further attempt to expand “the continuing conversation” around educational research, opening the dialogue to invite the views and voices of students.
Gender and Professionalization: An Institutional Analysis of Teacher Education and Unionism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Authors: Gitlin Andrew
Published: February 2022

The central thesis of this article is that professionalization projects, such as those endorsed by normal schools and schools of education, contributed to vertical and horizontal divisions of labor by constructing differing views of professionalization, which became associated with and gave institutional support to gendered assumptions about women and teaching in general. Local unions, such as the Chicago Federation of Teachers, provided a counterforce to these divisions of labor, by skirting concerns about certification and instead working directly with practicing teachers on issues of authority and autonomy. Unfortunately, these efforts by local unions often occurred within the shadow of national associations that tried to balance the interests of educational administrators and teachers. This balance limited the influence of local proposals that challenged men's advantage relative to women in the educational community.
Beyond Standards: The Rest of the Agenda
Authors: Sobol Thomas
Published: February 2022

Across the country, schools are involved in setting new high standards of curriculum content and student performance. The standards-based education reform movement has been championed by big business, by the nation's governors, by the president and the Congress, and by many in the field of education. This article argues that new high standards are necessary and desirable, but that alone they are not enough. Throughout our history the schools have sought to make students wise and just, as well as competent. If these traditional aspirations are to be realized, we must move beyond standards to support teachers, provide the necessary resources, deal straight with the problems of race, nurture community, and ennoble the purpose of education.
Constructing an Image of a White Teacher
Authors: Mcintyre Alice
Published: February 2022

This article explores how a small group of white middle– and upper–middle–class female student teachers constructed an image of what it means to be a “white” teacher. Through the use of qualitative participatory action research methods, the participants in this study critically reflected on their understandings of multicultural education and their positions as white student teachers involved in a teacher education program.

The participants were invited to be researchers about their daily lives, to pose problems that arose from the complexities of their own racial identities, and to develop realistic solutions for dealing with racism in their classrooms. Through initial one-to-one interviews, and during eight two-hour group sessions, the participants were provided with opportunities to view themselves as “white”—an experience that was relatively new to them. It also provided them with a challenging and highly provocative way to view their roles as white teachers.

The data presented in this article suggest that by white educators’ questioning and confronting their white identities and challenging the meaning of being “white” teachers, they can more effectively pursue teaching practices that significantly alter the way white students are educated about themselves and about multicultural education.
Catharine Macaulay's: Letters on Education
Authors: Titone Connie
Published: February 2022

Catherine Macaulay (1731–1791) is best known as an English historian. She was also, however, an insightful and articulate author on the topic of the education of young people. This article presents Macaulay's views as expressed in her noteworthy work Letters on Education, printed originally in 1787 and in revised form in 1790.

In Letters, Macaulay articulated her philosophy of education, which integrated her metaphysical beliefs and her epistemological views with the pedagogy and practice they implied. Her ultimate hope from the educational process was to yield an educated person who had attained the character, morals, and knowledge that she values in citizens of both genders.

The purpose of this article is to present a brief description of Catherine Macaulay's life and work within a social and political context that will offer detailed information and analysis on specific significant educational ideas as written Letters on Education. The vision undergirding her thought that is, Macaulay's views on human nature, the educated person, and moral education well be treated first. Second, the implementation of this vision in the educational process through curriculum, discipline, school, policy, and teacher dispositions and behaviors will be. explored
Poking Around: Outsiders View Chicago School Reform
Authors: Katz Michael B. , Fine Michelle , Simon Elaine
Published: February 2022

This article reports on five years of intermittent observations of Chicago school reform by a team consisting of a social historian, social psychologist, and urban anthropologist. It chronicles a method for tracking the implications of school reform over time. The authors started with the goal of reporting on Chicago to an audience outside the city: to their surprise, they discovered an audience inside the city eager to hear their observations. They focused on both the system-wide, structural view of reform and the ground-level view from the schools and local community. Their method consisted of identifying a network of informants inside the city, attending meetings and public events, and visiting schools, and they followed three schools closely for more than two years. When they realized that the phases of their own learning process had matched the phases in the history of Chicago school reform's first five years, they decided to structure their observations as a narrative exploring reform through their developing and changing understanding. Among the themes they discuss are the unique character of the reform; the role of reform's public/private civil society; the many stories of reform's origins; the multiple layers of reform; and the problem of evaluation.
An America Curriculum?
Authors: Cornbleth Catherine
Published: February 2022

Public schooling in the United States serves the purposes of Americanization and assimilation. Group and national identities are continually refashioned, however, and in the late 1990s, it is much less clear what students are being socialized or assimilated to than it was twenty or forty or eighty years ago. The resurgence of policy activity and controversy regarding American pluralism-diversity-multiculturalism has raised questions about what vision or version of the nation is to be transmitted to future generations via school curricula.

The focus of the study presented here is the images of America actually being conveyed in elementary, middle, and high school social studies classes. The absence of a single, predominant image of America in these classes can be understood as reflecting the complex realities of United States history and contemporary society. Closest to a dominant theme was “imperfect but best”—America as the best country in the world, despite past problems, current difficulties, and various complaints. Alternative interpretations were offered, all pointing to disruption of the traditional story of America, a disruption that challenges not only the conventional wisdom but also the privileged positions of those individuals and groups who have benefited from dominant ideologies and prevailing distributions of power.
Firmly Bolted into the Air: Wishful Rationalism as a Discursive Basis for Educational Reforms
Authors: Simola Hannu
Published: February 2022

The aim of this article is to promote a better understanding of the problematic relations between public reform discourse and the reality of schooling. The subject is the paradox of educational reforms: while superficially decisive, they seem, at the same time, to be deficient and insufficient. The article proposes that one explanation for this “vicious circle” of educational reform might be traced to the discursive dynamics of school reform rather than to the reforms themselves. The article is based on empirical findings and theoretical constructions developed in a Finnish study. Although the case is limited to a peripheral and small country, it may have more general implications. The analysis of changes in official Finnish school discourse since the late 1960's identifies four characteristic features: individualization, “disciplinization,” goal rationalization, and decontextualization. These changes then constitute a curious intertwining of utopianism and rationalism, a “wishful rationalism,” as a tacit discursive principle of the authoritarian approach to school reform. Reading official school discourse with this specific logic in mind seems to reveal something about the inner dynamics and paradoxes of educational reform.
Chapter VII: Contextualizing Teachers’ Responses to Writing in the College Classroom
Authors: Prior Paul
Published: February 2022

The theme writing in English A is of the most elementary description; but the compositions in this course, over 6,000 in number during each half year, are carefully criticized by the proper instructor and returned by him to the student. They are then rewritten, and often recast. Owing to the number of these exercises and the constant accumulation of fresh papers the rewritten themes are not read by the instructors, except to determine the final grade of a student whose mark is doubtful. The work of criticizing and correcting the English A themes is not inaptly described by certain of the instructors as of a “stupefying” character, to which it is difficult to give more than four hours of intelligent attention per day; and judging by a single set of 450 papas, your Committee is disposed to consider the adjective “stupefying” as a mild term to apply to such work, while four hours per day would seem an excessive time to devote to it.—Report of the Committee on Composition and Rhetoric, Harvard University, 1892.1
Educational Psychology and Technology: A Matter of Reciprocal Relations
Authors: Salomon Gavriel , Almog Tamar
Published: February 2022

Technology and instruction have recently entered an alliance of reciprocal influences. Technology serves instruction and at the same time opens up novel opportunities. Concerning the former, a major justification for the employment of computers is the acceptance of constructivist conceptions and a growing understanding of learning as a social process. Technology thus comes to facilitate the realization of the learning environments that emanate from constructivist conceptions. Concerning technology's influence on education, ever-newer technological affordances pull instruction in new and promising directions. However, many of these lack purpose or rationale. Why, for example, should students design their own wWeb sites? New questions arise that need to be answered, such as whether hypermedia programs offer frail and casual webs of information that lead to the cultivation of similarly flimsy mental networks (the “Butterfly Defect”), or whether computer-mediated communication (CMC) might create virtual, faceless learning environments. It also becomes evident that the new learning environments rely more heavily than their predecessors on students’ proclivity for self-regulated and mindful learning. Can technology facilitate the cultivation of these? Educational psychology and technology are now engaged in an intensive duet that, if seriously studied, explored, and evaluated, may offer novel and improved instruction.
Students’ Perceptions of Fairness in School Settings: A Gender Analysis
Authors: Nichols Sharon L. , Good Thomas L.
Published: February 2022

In this study, we explored gender differences in students’ perceptions of fairness in two southwestern schools. In particular, we surveyed 358 students in a junior high and 373 in a high school and examined how males and females differed with respect to how they perceived the fairness of their school and classes. Results suggest that gender differences in students’ perceptions of fairness were pervasive. Specifically, in the high school, females more frequently than males reported they felt their school was fair in terms of personal experiences. In contrast, females in the junior high school more frequently than males reported their school was fair in terms of SES and ethnicity differences. Data suggest that some schools may create an environment in which peer norms support school achievement. We predict that students’ perceptions of fairness mediate students outcomes within a classroom context; however, more research is needed to explicitly examine how fairness mediates students’ sense of community and academic performance.
Case Studies of Families Doing Third-grade Homework
Authors: Xu Jianzhong , Corno Lyn
Published: February 2022

In this article, we describe data from six cases studies of children doing third-grade homework with their parents. The study combined observation and interview data from children, parents, and teachers to take a close look at the dynamics of homework and its potential to develop self-responsibility in children. We discuss both methodology and results in the context of related investigations and modern theoretical direction. Our data provide clear evidence that everyday experiences with homework, as mediated by parents, provide opportunities for children to learn to cope with various difficulties and distractions associated with doing homework. How children seize those opportunities and begin to develop strategies and skills for doing homework, along with the nature of the mediation parents provide, are key topics for discussion. Our study suggests directions for future research, theory, and practice regarding homework.
How White Teachers Perceive the Problem of Racism in Their Schools: A Case Study in “Liberal” Lakeview
Authors: Kailin Julie
Published: February 2022

This study examined White teachers’ perceptions of racism in their schools. An open-ended questionnaire was administered to 222 teachers in a medium-sized highly rated middle-class Midwestern school district. Teachers were asked to provide examples of racism in their schools. Teachers’ responses were analyzed and coded according to major themes that were collapsed into three major categories: attribution of racial problems to Whites; attribution of racial problems to Blacks; attribution of racial problems to institutional/cultural factors. Research findings indicate that most White teachers operated from an impaired consciousness about racism; that a majority “blamed the victim,” assigning causality for racism to Blacks. Findings further indicate that of those who witnessed racist behavior by their White colleagues, the majority remained silent and did not challenge such behavior. Because teachers play a pivotal role in the sum total of race relations in education, it is critical to consider how they perceive the problem of racism in their schools. Their perceptions may influence decisions about how to interpret and respond to racial inequality.
Theorizing Race in the Context of Learning to Teach
Authors: Duesterberg Luann M.
Published: February 2022

Given the context of schools and society, in which the meanings of race so deeply impact social arrangements and social interactions, it is imperative for preservice teachers and teacher educators to engage in efforts to theorize race and understand how constructions of race affect our actions and decisions. Requiring that student teachers be committed to teaching every child in their classrooms demands that preservice teachers think through how they understand themselves and others through race in a society in which race is both the vehicle through which oppression is accomplished and the vehicle through which groups rally to combat that oppression. Thinking through race is complicated by the various theoretical conceptions of race that have grounded race relations in this country for the last 300 years. Arguing that race is neither purely ideological nor purely essential but grounded in sociohistorical ideologies and performances, this author uses this conceptualization of race both to interpret the practices of student teachers and to ground her own practice as a teacher educator.
Shifting Identities in Private Education: Reconstructing Race at/in the Cultural Center
Authors: Proweller Amira
Published: February 2022

To date, research on racial identity formation among youth in school context has neglected discussion and analysis of whiteness as a racialized identity production. Through qualitative, ethnographic methods of data collection, this discussion directs attention to the social construction of white racial identity among a group of adolescent girls attending a largely white, historically elite, private, independent, single-sex high school. Their voices provide insight into the ways in which liberal discourses work to position youth, and how white youth, in turn, actively remake themselves in relation to prevailing meanings and practices institutionalized in a largely white, upper-middle-class school setting. The study examines the intersections of race and class discourses in private school culture as they combine to create the conditions for meaning-making.
“You Can't Oppress Yourself”: Negotiating the Meaning of Opportunity in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Authors: Bempechat Janine , Abrahams Salie
Published: February 2022

This investigation examined how black South African adolescents conceptualized their outlooks on the past and future, taking into account their intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social-historical perspectives. This paper reports an analysis of themes that emerged in relation to achievement issues. Qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews showed that, despite having come of age in a society that was designed to oppress, these students were committed to high educational goals, determined to seize the opportunities that they perceived were now available to them, and held generally positive views about their futures. Results are discussed in terms of the intersection of achievement motivation theory and cultural psychology.
Freedom of expression as self-restraint
Authors: Kramer Matthew H
Published: February 2022

In my recent book Freedom of Expression as Self-Restraint, I expound and defend the moral principle of freedom of expression. This article recounts a few of the main strands of the exposition in that book, and it touches upon the justification for the principle of freedom of expression. Supplementing the abstract ideas broached in the article are several illustrative examples that render the abstractions more accessible.
Exploring perceptions about Mindfulness and Mindful Eating Programs for low-income women with overweight in primary health care
Authors: Salvo Vera , Schveitzer Mariana Cabral , Sanudo Adriana , Favarato Maria Lucia , Demarzo Marcelo
Published: February 2022

Background: Obesity and overweight are public health problems of multifactorial etiology, aggravated by the challenge that is maintaining weight loss. Used in the context of general health, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have also showed positive effects when targeting changes to overweight-related eating behaviors. Methods: This study consists of a pragmatic randomized controlled trial conducted with 284 women from primary health care units. Data were collected from the last session with 16 focus groups, considering each intervention group (mindfulness or mindful eating) Aim: This article aims to present the perceptions of low-income overweight women who participated in Mindfulness and Mindful Eating intervention groups in primary health care according to each type of intervention. Results: Seven themes were identified: course challenges; valorization of the teacher's attitudes; mindfulness understanding; self-awareness development; change of expectations; development of a different food–weight relationship; and discover of a wide range of benefits. Conclusion: Mindfulness and Mindful eating interventions affect not only an individual's relationship with body and food, but also life and human relations. The results indicate the feasibility of the intervention, which addresses a large number of patients who lack treatment options for overweight or emotional and psychological issues associated with this condition. MBIs such as mindful eating are applicable in primary health care facilities, targeting overweight women and supporting treatment by addressing a repressed demand in the system. Similar to mind-body therapies, these interventions allow for comprehensive care.

ClinicalTrials.gov, (NCT02893150) on 30 March 2017.
Orthography does not hinder non-native production learning in children
Authors: Immonen Katja , Peltola Kimmo U , Tamminen Henna , Alku Paavo , Peltola Maija S
Published: February 2022

Children are known to be fast learners due to their neural plasticity. Learning a non-native language (L2) requires the mastering of new production patterns. In classroom settings, learners are not only exposed to the acoustic input, but also to the unfamiliar grapheme–phoneme correspondences of the L2 orthography. We tested how 9–10-year-old children, with Finnish as a native language (L1), respond to a two-day listen-and-repeat training paradigm, where they simultaneously hear acoustic stimuli and see orthographic cues. In the procedure, non-words containing the L2 vowel /ʉ/ were presented simultaneously with an orthographic cue showing , guiding pronunciation towards the L1 vowel /u/ according to Finnish grapheme–phoneme correspondences. Earlier studies showed that Finnish adults rely on the orthographic cue over the acoustic one, leading them to produce /u/ instead of /ʉ/ when presented with the incongruent L1–L2 grapheme–phoneme correspondence ( – L1: /u/, L2: /ʉ/). Also, an earlier result from age-matched children receiving only acoustic input showed relatively fast pronunciation changes towards the target vowel. Our present results indicate clear and fast production learning of the non-native sound, and the misleading orthographic cue did not draw attention away from the target acoustic form. With orthographic cues, the participants learned to produce novel sounds faster than without them.