Description:
Background There is increasing evidence that schools internationally are not meeting the needs of increasing numbers of young people, especially those at the secondary level, and whose backgrounds have placed them at disadvantage. The evidence is that significant numbers of young people are becoming disconnected from school. While the official term for this is 'disengagement', it seems that official educational policy responses to these tendencies, far from 'fixing' the problem, seem to be exacerbating it. Current policy preoccupations that emphasize accountability, greater parental choice of schools and a more prescriptive curriculum can present difficulties for young people, particularly those from challenging backgrounds. There may be a mismatch between formal educational policy, and the lived experiences at the level of the school and classroom for the most vulnerable young people. Purpose This paper reports on a single instance of a high school that embarked upon a process of reinventing itself in respect of the importance of relationships and 'relational power' for students over their learning. The paper examines what the teachers and students had to say about the efficacy of this school-based reform. Sample The case-study school was located in an area of extreme social disadvantage in which young people had diminished educational expectations. The research involved observations and interviews with a small sample of stakeholders and focus groups with students (13-16-year-olds). Design and method The study was an ethnographic case study of a single secondary school conducted over a five-week continuous period. It used 'embedded interviews' involving observation of in-class teaching prior to extensive 1-hour interviews with teachers and students' focus groups. All interviews were recorded. Detailed field notes were kept of classroom observations and other activities, including school assemblies, staff meetings and reflections on informal conversations held during teaching breaks in the staffroom. Results and conclusions Positive outcomes emerged from a context where fair boundaries were established and in which students could see school as a place where they could experience fun in their learning. The process was by no means complete, but the school felt that it had found a more efficacious way to move forward and the students made this clear in their statements about what the school was attempting to do with them. Key to these positive outcomes was a commitment to placing relationships between students, teachers and parents at the centre of everything the school did.
Description:
This article focuses on Big Picture thinking about 21st-century teacher education and presents a conceptual shift as the result of two decades of research and practice centred around an understanding that we live in a world troubled by a massive breakdown in relationships. Through reflection within four specific educational contexts and with the recognition of a need for the personal and social development of teachers, a person-centred model of teacher education, the transformism model, has been developed. The transformism, or evolution of teacher education, seeks to use a different mind-set, or a changed psychology, which moves away from a focus on the control of others by those who think they know what is best. Rather it is about transformative learning, achieved through reflection within a landscape of transformation. Effective teacher education, using this model embraces Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future and the embedding of Glasser’s choice theory. The conceptual shift occurs through a major change in consciousness and the concomitant development of a worldview rather than a me view
Description:
A model of monitoring interactions was proposed that is based on behavioural principles and places episodic parent-adolescent interactions at the centre of analysis for monitoring. The process-monitoring model contends that monitoring is an interactive process between parents and their adolescents, nested within a socialsetting. In the model it is proposed that monitoring occurs in discrete episodes that change over the course of adolescent development. To explain monitoring interactions it is essential to expand research to include a functional assessment of monitoring exchanges between parents and adolescents and to also measure thequality of parent-adolescent relationships, consider adolescent age and development, parental characteristics, and the context of the family.
Description:
A model of monitoring interactions was proposed that is based on behavioural principles and places episodic parent-adolescent interactions at the centre of analysis for monitoring. The process-monitoring model contends that monitoring is an interactive process between parents and their adolescents, nested within a socialsetting. In the model it is proposed that monitoring occurs in discrete episodes that change over the course of adolescent development. To explain monitoring interactions it is essential to expand research to include a functional assessment of monitoring exchanges between parents and adolescents and to also measure thequality of parent-adolescent relationships, consider adolescent age and development, parental characteristics, and the context of the family.
Description:
An age characterised by the sort of 'manufactured uncertainty' identified by Giddens (1994) throws up for scrutiny any number of taken-for-granted assumptions regarding professional practice experience in the Education field. This paper explores the suggestive possibilities of discourses of pre-service teacher practica in terms of naming, positioning and examination of taken-for-granted aspects of teacher education as they present at a regional university in Victoria, Australia. The University of Ballarat has introduced a new P-10 teacher education course. In the second year of its progress, traditional aspects of paid supervisory and assessment roles of practising teachers in relation to student teachers have been the focus of attention and activity based on reconfigured foci on the roles of both practising teachers and undergraduate students. One such focus is on what Schön (1987) describes as 'indeterminate zones of practice', and the result has been a research program exploring those zones in terms of mentorship in relation to mandated supervision and assessment requirements for graduate registration. The project is action-research based, with teacher, student, academic and semi-academic/teacher roles considered in the light of suggestive possibilities of mentorship and reflective practices as transformative possibilities in relation to roles associated with these.
Description:
This paper highlights the tensions evident in maintaining ethical principles while simultaneously responding to interpersonal and cultural demands in an intercultural research setting. The tensions reflect the intersections of relationships between ethical principles and practice, between a researcher and her research participants, and between people in the same or different cultural communities. The intricacies of cultures encompass unpredictable expectations for many aspects of research, as shown in the sociological perspectives, which are at the very centre of deliberations in this paper. It is argued that ethics, interpersonal relationships and cultural considerations are representative of the complexity of considerations that researchers negotiate throughout the conduct of an intercultural study. Therefore, it is important that the positioning of ethical practices is considered as central to the wider research process.
Description:
Improving the health of Traveller Communities is an international public health concern but there is little evidence on effective interventions. This study aimed to explain how, for whom and in what circumstances outreach works in Traveller Communities. A realist synthesis was undertaken. Systematic literature searches were conducted between August and November 2011. Grey literature was sought and key stakeholders were involved throughout the review process. Iterative steps of data extraction, analysis and synthesis, followed by additional searches were undertaken. An explanatory framework details how, why and in what circumstances participation, behaviour change or social capital development happened. The trust status of outreach workers is an important context of outreach interventions, in conjunction with their ability to negotiate the intervention focus. The higher the outreach worker's trust status, the lower the imperative that they negotiate the intervention focus. A 'menu' of reasoning mechanisms is presented, leading to key engagement outcomes. Adopting a realist analysis, this study offers a framework with explanatory purchase as to the potential of outreach to improve health in marginalized groups.