Search results

1 – 10 of over 1000
Article
Publication date: 31 October 2023

Christy Goldsmith

By engaging levels of W/writerliness, this paper aims to identify how English Language Arts teachers’ personal and professional W/writerly identities impact their performance of…

Abstract

Purpose

By engaging levels of W/writerliness, this paper aims to identify how English Language Arts teachers’ personal and professional W/writerly identities impact their performance of pedagogical agency.

Design/methodology/approach

In this narrative inquiry, the author draws on theories of writing identity and agency to analyze how four mid-career English teachers’ personal beliefs around writing intersect with their professional practice. Data sources include interviews, journal entries and classroom observations.

Findings

Nuanced differences in teachers’ W/writerly identities produce more substantial differences in their pedagogy, especially impacting their performance of agency to (re)define successful writing outcomes and to balance process and product in their writing instruction.

Practical implications

This paper presents one method to expand preservice and in-service English Language Arts (ELA) practitioners’ approaches to teaching writing even alongside limitations of their teaching context by (1) emphasizing their ownership over their own writing in university methods courses; (2) leading teachers on an exploration of W/writerly identities; and (3) investigating ways teachers can transfer their personal and professional learning to students via their own pedagogical agency.

Originality/value

The study extends the work of scholars in the National Writing Project, suggesting that nuanced exploration of ELA teachers’ W/writerly identities in preservice and in-service settings could increase their sense of agency to work against and within cultures of standardization.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 22 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Policy Matters
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-481-9

Article
Publication date: 19 January 2024

Bethany R. Mather and Jeremy D. Visone

This study explored teachers' perceptions of a specific, collaborative peer observation structure, collegial visits, and collegial visits' connection to collective teacher…

Abstract

Purpose

This study explored teachers' perceptions of a specific, collaborative peer observation structure, collegial visits, and collegial visits' connection to collective teacher efficacy (CTE). The research question was: how do teachers perceive collegial visits, particularly with respect to their influence on CTE?

Design/methodology/approach

Within this qualitative descriptive study, 13 K-12 educators from three northeastern USA schools (one urban high school and a suburban middle and elementary school) were interviewed individually and/or in a focus group.

Findings

Utilizing social cognitive theory as a framework for analysis, the authors found a theme of a shift from uninformed to informed perceptions of the collective. Results demonstrated that collegial visits foster positive CTE beliefs.

Practical implications

Since collegial visits were found to increase participants' CTE, a construct others have associated with increased student achievement, school leaders should consider implementing collegial visits as a professional learning structure in their schools after considering their specific context.

Originality/value

Though there has been recent scholarship connecting peer observations and CTE, there has been no research, to date, to examine the effect of the specific structure of collegial visits on CTE.

Details

Journal of Professional Capital and Community, vol. 9 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-9548

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Understanding Children's Informal Learning: Appreciating Everyday Learners
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-274-5

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 16 April 2024

Rebecca Rogers, Martille Elias, LaTisha Smith and Melinda Scheetz

This paper shares findings from a multi-year literacy professional development partnership between a school district and university (2014–2019). We share this case of a Literacy…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper shares findings from a multi-year literacy professional development partnership between a school district and university (2014–2019). We share this case of a Literacy Cohort initiative as an example of cross-institutional professional development situated within several of NAPDS’ nine essentials, including professional learning and leading, boundary-spanning roles and reflection and innovation (NAPDS, 2021).

Design/methodology/approach

We asked, “In what ways did the Cohort initiative create conditions for community and collaboration in the service of meaningful literacy reforms?” Drawing on social design methodology (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010), we sought to generate and examine the educational change associated with this multi-year initiative. Our data set included programmatic data, interviews (N = 30) and artifacts of literacy teaching, learning and leading.

Findings

Our findings reflect the emphasis areas that are important to educators in the partnership: diversity by design, building relationships through collaboration and rooting literacy reforms in teacher leadership. Our discussion explores threads of reciprocity, simultaneous renewal and boundary-spanning leadership and their role in sustaining partnerships over time.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to our understanding of building and sustaining a cohort model of multi-year professional development through the voices, perspectives and experiences of teachers, faculty and district administrators.

Details

School-University Partnerships, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1935-7125

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 December 2023

Baburhan Uzum, Bedrettin Yazan, Sedat Akayoglu and Ufuk Keles

This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.

Design/methodology/approach

Forty-eight TCs participated (26 in Türkiye and 22 in the USA) in the study. TCs discussed critical issues in multicultural education on an online learning platform for six weeks. Their discussions were analyzed using content and discourse analysis.

Findings

The findings indicated that TCs approached the telecollaborative space as a translingual contact zone and positioned themselves and their interlocutors in the discourse by using the personal pronouns; I, we, you and they. When they positioned themselves using we (people in Türkiye/USA), they spoke on behalf of everyone included in the scope of we. Their interlocutors responded to these positionings either by accepting this positioning and responding with a parallel positioning or by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies to revise the scope of we and sharing some differences/nuances in beliefs and practices in their community.

Research limitations/implications

When TCs talk about their culture and community in a singular manner using we, they frame them as the same across every member in that community. When they ask questions to each other using you, the framing of the questions prime the respondents to sometimes relay their own specific experiences as the norm or consider experiences from different points of view through translingual negotiation strategies. A singular approach to culture(s) may affect the marginalized communities the most because they are lost in this representation, and their experiences and voices are not integrated in the narratives or integrated with stereotypical representation.

Practical implications

Teachers and teacher educators should first pay attention to their language choices, especially use of pronouns, which may communicate inclusion or exclusion in intercultural conversations. Next, they should prepare their students to adopt and practice language choices that communicate respect for cultural diversity and are inclusive of marginalized populations.

Social implications

Speakers’ pronoun use includes identity construction in discourse by drawing borders around and between communities and cultures with generalization and particularity, and by patrolling those borders to decide who is included and excluded. As a response, interlocutors use pronouns either to acknowledge those borders and respond with corresponding ones from their own context or negotiate alternative representations or further investigate for particularity or complexity. In short, pronouns could lead the direction of intercultural conversations toward criticality and complexity or otherwise, and might be reasons where there are breakdowns in communication or to fix those breakdowns.

Originality/value

This study shows that translingual negotiation strategies have explanatory power to examine how speakers from different language backgrounds negotiate second and third order positionings in the telecollaborative space.

Details

Journal for Multicultural Education, vol. 18 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2053-535X

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 21 March 2023

Shahrokh Nikou, Candida Brush and Birgitte Wraae

Entrepreneurship education (EE) is critical for developing the skills of tomorrow's entrepreneurs and leaders. While significant research examines the content, student learning…

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Abstract

Purpose

Entrepreneurship education (EE) is critical for developing the skills of tomorrow's entrepreneurs and leaders. While significant research examines the content, student learning processes and outcomes, less studied are the entrepreneurship educators and their pedagogical preferences. Following a cognitive process model of decision-making, this study explores how self-efficacy, philosophy of teaching, entrepreneurship training and teaching experience influence entrepreneurship educator preferences to follow either a teacher-centric or a student-centric approach. This study also includes gender in a secondary analysis of the relationships.

Design/methodology/approach

The data were collected from 289 entrepreneurship educators in 2021, and fuzzy-set comparative qualitative analysis (fsQCA) was used to obtain configurations of conditions (causal recipes) that lead to teacher-centric or student-centric model. A secondary analysis explores whether there are different configurations of conditions when gender is added to the analysis.

Findings

The results of our fsQCA analysis reveal multiple configurations of conditions (causal recipes) that result in a preference for either a teacher-centric or student-centric approach to teaching entrepreneurship. The authors find that teaching experience is the main condition for the teacher-centric model, while self-efficacy and entrepreneurship training are the main conditions for the pathways leading to student-centric model. The fsQCA results also show that the configurations are affected when gender is taken into account in the analysis.

Originality/value

This study, one of the first of its kind, uses a configurational approach to examine pathways that contribute to the teaching preferences of entrepreneurship educators. This paper uses self-efficacy, teaching philosophy, teaching experience and entrepreneurship training as conditions to identify multiple unique pathways that result in either a teacher-centric or student-centric pedagogical model in EE. Notably, differences by gender are also found in this study.

Details

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, vol. 29 no. 11
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2554

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 2023

Sue Cronin

This paper aims to consider the practices and experiences of the new school-based mentors for Early Career Teachers (ECT's), emerging from the UK Government's new early career…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to consider the practices and experiences of the new school-based mentors for Early Career Teachers (ECT's), emerging from the UK Government's new early career framework (ECF) policy (DfE, 2019a). The paper uses Lipsky's (2010) framing of professionals as “street level bureaucrats” to consider the extent to which the ECT mentors, as new policy actors, exercise professional discretion (Lipsky, 2010) in negotiating and aligning the new ECF policy with existing practice.

Design/methodology/approach

To research the mentor's interpretation and enactment of the new ECF policy, semi structured interviews were undertaken with an initial sample of nine mentors and four induction tutors who were also mentors. Online semi structured interviews were held, lasting around 50 min. This method was largely pragmatic as the study started during a period when schools were still cautious of face-to-face visitors in terms of COVID-19. Although the benefits for the interviewer experiencing the culture and context in which the ECT mentor was situated were lost, offering online interviews was critical in securing mentors' time.

Findings

Findings suggest a disconnect between the intentions of the policy and the reality of its enactment at a local level. The ECT mentors have limited professional discretion, but some are exercising this in relation to their own professional development and the training they are providing for their ECTs. Most of the mentors are adapting the ECT's professional development journey whilst mindful of the programme requirements. The degree to which the ECT mentors used professional discretion was linked and limited largely by their own levels of confidence and experience of mentoring, and to a lesser extent the culture of their schools.

Research limitations/implications

The ECF policy represents an important step in acknowledging the need to professionally develop mentors for the work they undertake supporting beginning teachers. However, the time and the content of the mentor training have not been given sufficient attention and remains a hugely missed opportunity. It does not appear to be recognised by the government policy makers but more significantly and concerning in this research sample it is not being recognised sufficiently by those mentoring the ECTs themselves.

Practical implications

There is an urgent need by the UK government and school leaders to understand the link between the quality of mentor preparation and the quality of the ECTs who will be entering the profession and influencing the quality of education in future years. More time and resourcing need to be focussed on the professional development of mentors enabling them to exercise professional discretion in increasingly sophisticated ways in relation to the implementation of the ECF policy.

Originality/value

The ECF policy is the latest English government response to international concerns around the recruitment and retention of teachers. The policy mandates for a new policy actor: the ECT mentor, responsible for the support and professional development of beginning teachers. The nature of the mentor's role in relation to the policy is emerging and provides an interesting case study in the disconnect between the intentions of a policy and its initial enactment on the ground. The mentors may be viewed as street level bureaucrats exercising degrees of professional discretion as they interpret the policy in their own school context.

Details

International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, vol. 12 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6854

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 March 2024

Olasunkanmi James Kehinde, Jeff Walls, Amanda Mayeaux and Allison Comeaux

The purpose of this study is to propose and explore a conceptualization of decisional capital that is suitable for early career teachers.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to propose and explore a conceptualization of decisional capital that is suitable for early career teachers.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses exploratory factor analysis on a sample of early career teachers to examine a literature-derived conceptualization of decisional capital.

Findings

The factors that emerged support the literature-derived conceptualization. A subsequent confirmatory factor analysis on a second sample of early career teachers offers additional evidence for the proposed conceptualization. An exploration of the underlying factor structure comparing results across four competing models (i.e. unidimensional, correlated factors, second order, and bifactor) suggests that a second order factor explains the variance across the three proposed factors well. We conclude that this second order factor is decisional capital.

Originality/value

This is the first study that examines the discrete elements of decisional capital. Understanding these discrete elements is an avenue for investigation into the development of decisional capital beyond the acknowledgment that it takes time to develop.

Details

Journal of Professional Capital and Community, vol. 9 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-9548

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 14 December 2023

Chika Hosoda

This chapter contributes to deepening understandings of the diversity of young people’s political participation and the socio-political and cultural influences that shape the…

Abstract

This chapter contributes to deepening understandings of the diversity of young people’s political participation and the socio-political and cultural influences that shape the uptake of activism. Drawing on scholarly theorisation of ‘implicit activism’, it begins from the premise that forms of activism vary depending on the social values, culture, and politics of different societies. To unpack the relationships between socio-political and cultural contexts and different forms of activism, this study addresses the question: what kind of activism do Japanese citizenship teachers envisage for secondary school students? Interviews were conducted with 11 educators across Japan; data were thematically analysed, and findings suggest that Japanese citizenship teachers encourage implicit forms of activism. This includes students being encouraged to develop personal and political efficacy to participate in political structures and raise their voices. Teachers also aim to develop students’ critical thinking skills to analyse society, with a focus on decoding political messages in one’s daily life. In the Japanese social and cultural context, which favours cohesion rather than confrontation, the endorsement of philanthropic activism, such as making donations, is also evident. Findings indicate that implicit forms of activism are embedded in everyday life. The study offers fresh insights into less tangible forms of activism characterised by small acts that address social concerns and issues affecting people’s own lives and the lives of others. It is argued that such implicit activism should not be overlooked, for as with explicit activism, it is also centrally concerned with fostering change.

Details

Childhood, Youth and Activism: Demands for Rights and Justice from Young People and their Advocates
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-469-5

Keywords

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