title: Policies, programs, and practices: Exploring the complex dynamics of assessment education in teacher education across four countries

authors: DeLuca, Christopher

subjects: assessment literacy

abstract: There has been a global trend toward increased accountability and assessment in schools over the past several decades. Across policy and professional standards, teachers have been repeatedly called to integrate assessment throughout their practice to identify, monitor, support, evaluate, and report on student learning. This professional capacity to integrate and utilize assessment to effectively facilitate student learning has long been characterized as teachers' “assessment literacy,” or more recently “assessment competency,” and “assessment capability”. Concerningly, research indicates that teachers generally maintain low levels of assessment knowledge and skills, with beginning teachers particularly underprepared for assessment in schools. This persistent finding is unsurprising as researchers argue that assessment has historically been a neglected area of study in teacher education programs. However, with the rise of accountability mandates, assessment is beginning to occupy a more prominent and necessary role in pre-service preparatory programs. However, analyzing and situating assessment education in relation to broader conceptions of assessment literacy remains necessary in order to effectively promote the assessment capability of beginning teachers. Likewise, understanding how assessment education and assessment literacy are shaped by the complex dynamics and larger teacher education frameworks and how they contribute to teachers' developing professional identities is essential in constructing a more comprehensive view of teacher preparation within and for accountability-driven systems of education. This paper analyzes teacher education policies, programs, and practices aimed at supporting initial teacher learning in assessment across four country contexts: Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. Bernstein's (1999) codes of classification and framing provide an analytic discourse for examining the vertical and horizontal messages about assessment that shape teacher capability in this key area of professional practice. In drawing on policy and teacher education documents and qualitative data (i.e., interview and teacher reflections) from across each country context, the paper concludes with five consistent and interconnected findings about the complex landscape for teacher preparation in assessment.

text: Policies, programs, and practices: Exploring the complex dynamics of assessment education in teacher education across four countries There has been a global trend toward increased accountability and assessment in schools over the past several decades. Across policy and professional standards, teachers have been repeatedly called to integrate assessment throughout their practice to identify, monitor, support, evaluate, and report on student learning. This professional capacity to integrate and utilize assessment to effectively facilitate student learning has long been characterized as teachers' “assessment literacy,” or more recently “assessment competency,” and “assessment capability”. Concerningly, research indicates that teachers generally maintain low levels of assessment knowledge and skills, with beginning teachers particularly underprepared for assessment in schools. This persistent finding is unsurprising as researchers argue that assessment has historically been a neglected area of study in teacher education programs. However, with the rise of accountability mandates, assessment is beginning to occupy a more prominent and necessary role in pre-service preparatory programs. However, analyzing and situating assessment education in relation to broader conceptions of assessment literacy remains necessary in order to effectively promote the assessment capability of beginning teachers. Likewise, understanding how assessment education and assessment literacy are shaped by the complex dynamics and larger teacher education frameworks and how they contribute to teachers' developing professional identities is essential in constructing a more comprehensive view of teacher preparation within and for accountability-driven systems of education. This paper analyzes teacher education policies, programs, and practices aimed at supporting initial teacher learning in assessment across four country contexts: Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. Bernstein's (1999) codes of classification and framing provide an analytic discourse for examining the vertical and horizontal messages about assessment that shape teacher capability in this key area of professional practice. In drawing on policy and teacher education documents and qualitative data (i.e., interview and teacher reflections) from across each country context, the paper concludes with five consistent and interconnected findings about the complex landscape for teacher preparation in assessment.

year: 2019

title: Using Foucault’s notions of discourse to explore and research child sexuality

authors: Flanagan, Paul G.

abstract: “The object, in short, is to define the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality in our part of the world” (Foucault, 1978/1990, p. 11). Ideas of sexuality and ideas of childhood are located within historical, cultural and social contexts. Using Foucault’s notions of discourse, my doctoral study examines not only a history of childhood and sexuality, but also how language currently constructs the child and has effects on constructions of sexuality and childhood. Using six brief vignettes to engage parents, teachers and counsellors, as participants in talk about sexuality in childhood, I identified language that (re)constructs childhood and sexuality/gender. I describe citational chains that reiterate and repeat constructions of childhood and sexuality/gender as: 1. Children should only know about sex as heteronormatively gendered; 2. Children should not know about sex as reproduction; and 3. Children should not know about sex as pleasure. In studying language used by adults (parents, teachers and counsellors) in their talk about childhood and sexuality, Foucauldian discourse analysis provides a methodological approach to analyse effects of power/knowledge. Together with Butlerian performative theory and queer theory, an example of relations of power is given to show how adult language constructs and reconstructs childhood as innocent and ignorant of sexuality knowledge of reproduction and pleasure while also reiterating childhood sexuality as heteronormatively gendered.

text: Using Foucault’s notions of discourse to explore and research child sexuality “The object, in short, is to define the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality in our part of the world” (Foucault, 1978/1990, p. 11). Ideas of sexuality and ideas of childhood are located within historical, cultural and social contexts. Using Foucault’s notions of discourse, my doctoral study examines not only a history of childhood and sexuality, but also how language currently constructs the child and has effects on constructions of sexuality and childhood. Using six brief vignettes to engage parents, teachers and counsellors, as participants in talk about sexuality in childhood, I identified language that (re)constructs childhood and sexuality/gender. I describe citational chains that reiterate and repeat constructions of childhood and sexuality/gender as: 1. Children should only know about sex as heteronormatively gendered; 2. Children should not know about sex as reproduction; and 3. Children should not know about sex as pleasure. In studying language used by adults (parents, teachers and counsellors) in their talk about childhood and sexuality, Foucauldian discourse analysis provides a methodological approach to analyse effects of power/knowledge. Together with Butlerian performative theory and queer theory, an example of relations of power is given to show how adult language constructs and reconstructs childhood as innocent and ignorant of sexuality knowledge of reproduction and pleasure while also reiterating childhood sexuality as heteronormatively gendered.

year: 2019

title: Legal, business and comparative issues in mining and petroleum activity with respect to Māori matters

authors: Barton, Barry

abstract: In this paper I propose to do three things: to identify the very different implications of the different stages of the mining and the oil and gas sequence, to discuss the basics of the Crown Minerals Act and associated legislation, with particular reference to Māori interests, and to touch on a few points of comparison with Canada.

text: Legal, business and comparative issues in mining and petroleum activity with respect to Māori matters In this paper I propose to do three things: to identify the very different implications of the different stages of the mining and the oil and gas sequence, to discuss the basics of the Crown Minerals Act and associated legislation, with particular reference to Māori interests, and to touch on a few points of comparison with Canada.

year: 2014