Professional paradoxes : context for development of beginning teacher identity and knowledges

It is anticipated that the current workforce of teachers in Victoria, Australia will retire within the next 5-15 years. The paradox for teachers at the career entry point is that while they are expected to quickly assume responsibility for education in this state, beginning teachers are reporting dissatisfaction with teaching and describing it as an &lsquo;unprofessional&rsquo; profession. Drawing from recently commissioned research for the Victorian Institute of Teaching, a study of sixty beginning teachers and a micro study of the &lsquo;internship&rsquo; experience of teacher educators, this paper explores the consequences of what counts as professional knowledge. By problematising identity issues for beginning teachers it is hoped that greater understanding of the complexities of their realities is revealed. The aspirations for the (re) generation of a profession are entangled in discordant displacement of meanings of what it is to become a teacher. What do &lsquo;othering&rsquo; and power(less) positions of beginning teachers mean for the immediate future of the profession? What then are the implications for school contexts, colleague support and pre-service teacher education?<br /

Young Australians, illness and education: report on the national database project

Chronically-ill children who need to take extended absences from school are neither officially acknowledged nor assisted to keep up, according to this report. Executive summary Australia’s health system faces many challenges related to chronic and complex health conditions. Major advances in biomedicine mean that children and young people are now surviving conditions that would have meant early death just a short time ago. This has major implications for Australia’s education systems. &nbsp; A troubling side effect of this success in medicine is the number of children and young people who manage their chronic health conditions, but who can easily remain overlooked in education. In many ways this is a new frontier for teachers, schools and education systems. Never before have so many students been present in our classrooms, who have survived major health challenges, but who are not yet systematically supported to thrive in education. &nbsp; This report provides a detailed summary of education, health and demographic information about Australian children and young people who live with significant health conditions. This study closely examined an important national database of 2360 such individuals. &nbsp; This study is contextualised within recent international literature from the fields of education, medicine, oncology, public health, paediatric nursing, psychology, counselling, psychiatry and social policy. Socio-economic indexes developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics were employed in the analysis of data. &nbsp; As Australian government figures are not available about these young people as an educational cohort, the major purpose of this study was to provide an empirical base for policy recommendation and further investigation. An important secondary aim of the study was to contribute to the growing body of evidence about pressing educational issues related to these children and young people. Concern about the education of this group is expected to escalate as this cohort of Australian students continues to expand, due to advances in biomedicine

Partnerships for learning : an international perspective on the development of inclusive schools

One of the most difficult issues faced in school university partnerships is the legitimacy of the collaborative relationship. Getting invited in as a university partner and staying on to support teacher knowledge is challenging. Through an account of a case study set in one large secondary school located in the western suburbs of Victoria, we disentangle the importance of seldom considered barriers that impact on professional learning. Shaping our understanding through a theoretical model where the movement between identity, beliefs and decision and action is identified as \u27noticing\u27 (Moss et al. 2004, Mason 2002) we describe the potential of the model in developing a \u27pedagogy of hope\u27 (hooks 2003). Noticing, working at the elusive intersections of observation and construction, permits non-linear connections. A \u27pedagogy of hope\u27 works for a sustainable learning community- a community for all students, teachers and school leaders.<br /

A New Look at Shorter Hours of Work in the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union

This paper argues that we need to look again at hours of work. One out of every five Canadians is working more than 40 hours a week as their regular hours, while one out of ten work over 50 hours. On top of this, overtime is excessive - paid overtime alone is the equivalent of 225,000 full-time jobs. A major study by the CEP in the pulp and paper industry has shown that overtime may be more expensive than hiring additional workers and that workers are willing to reduce overtime in order to save or create jobs. On reducing regular hours of work, the CEP has found that additional days away from work, once negotiated and experienced, are extremely popular. While more time off is about job creation, better health and safety and improving family and social life, it opposes the lean and mean approach of business corporations. Cet article soutient que nous devons repenser les heures de travail. Un Canadien ou une Canadienne sur cinq a une semaine de travail normale de plus de 40 heures et un ou une sur dix travaille plus de 50 heures par semaine. Qui plus est, les heures supplémentaires sont excessives. Les heures supplémentaires rémunérées comptent, à elles seules, pour l’équivalent de 225 000 emplois à plein temps. Un importante étude réalisée par le SCEP dans l’industrie papetière a révélé qu’il peut être plus coûteux de faire effectuer des heures supplémentaires que d’engager des employés ou employées additionnels et que les gens sont disposés à réduire leurs heures supplémentaires afin de maintenir ou de créer des emplois. Le SCEP a constaté que les personnes ayant consenti à réduire leurs heures normales de travail apprécient grandement leurs journées libres supplémentaires. L’augmentation du temps libre est destinée à créer des emplois, à accroître la santé et la sécurité et améliorer la vie familiale et sociale, mais elle s’oppose au régime minceur des entreprises

Effectiveness of Goal Setting on Teacher Evaluation

Research Focus. The purpose of this study was to determine effectiveness of goal setting protocol procedures implemented by three school districts on teacher evaluation scores using the Texas Teacher Effectiveness Evaluation System (TESS). It determined which school’s teacher evaluation ratings increased and the effect goal setting had on the increased goals. The evaluation system uses formative and summative goals to support teachers. Texas Teacher Support System added the goal setting professional development process for all teachers to reflect on their practice and identify needs of improvement. With these goals, teachers should become more effective teachers. The teacher and the administer develop a plan to reach goals and personal progress toward goals. Then they reflect on these goals throughout the year to track personal growth and the effects on student growth (TEA, 2014). Since the goal setting and professional development process is a new aspect to the appraisal system and there little available data of its effectiveness, research on this topic is warranted. Research Methods. A mixed methods methodology was used that emphasized the quantitative perspective. Qualitative methods were used in order to add a descriptive dimension to the quantitative results. A primarily quantitative study was chosen to determine the effectiveness of goal setting on teacher evaluation scores using the given data from the teacher’s evaluation scores and teachers rating of goal setting protocol. Data were collected from three south Texas school districts that have participated in the Texas Teacher Evaluation Support System over the last four years. A factorial ANOVA analysis compared goal setting protocol and teacher evaluation scores at each of the three school districts over the four year time period. The Texas Teacher Evaluation Support System does not give a specified protocol for school districts to follow, therefore the protocol used is determined by the school principals. The purpose of this study is to see if there is a difference in the protocols and what affect it has on teacher overall evaluation score. Research Results/Findings. Although the between-within factorial ANOVA indicated the presence of an interaction between districts and years, the simple main effects did not evidence any significant differences between individual districts or years. This indicates that goal setting protocol changes did not make a difference in any of the districts. There were also no significant correlations between teacher satisfaction with goal setting protocols and evaluation scores. This further substantiates the lack of evidence linking goal setting with teacher evaluations. According to the teacher responses, goal setting was often left up to the teachers to do, and it was only sporadically monitored by administrators. This lack of focus on goal attainment could explain the lack of relationships demonstrated in the quantitative data. Conclusions From Research. This research was undertaken with the assumption that if goal setting protocols were becoming an important part of teacher evaluations, then their evaluation scores should reflect this different approach. This research demonstrated that not only was there no measurable difference between the teacher evaluation scores by district or by year, but that there was not even a significant relationship between the satisfaction of goal setting and teacher evaluation scores. As the goal setting protocols were described by teachers as generally unimportant and not consistently developed or monitored, it is not surprising that differences did not present in the data. It would be interesting to run this study again using districts with strict adherence to interactive goal setting protocols

Cognitive spaces: Expanding participation framework by looking at signed language interpreters’ discourse and conceptual blending

We know from previous research (Wadenjso, 1998; Metzger, 1999; Roy, 2000) that interpreters are active participants within the interpreting event. We know that interpreters interact with the participants, and discourse by negotiating turn-taking, and adjusting the interpretation to meet cultural expectations. According to participation framework, speakers align themselves with the different participants in the communication event, or shift between different types of footing (Goffman, 1981). This framework has also been used to analyze interpreters, (Wadensjo, 1982, 1998; Metzger, 1999; Roy, 2000) to show how interpreters are not neutral participants in the event, but are interacting with many of the demands of the job, one of which is the discourse. In this research, which was an investigation of a monologue-interpreted event, the interpreters align themselves or blend the mental space of the original message with their interpreted message. In other words, the interpreters hold, at the minimum, two frames of footing active, simultaneously, instead of switching between the frames of footing. Cognitive linguistics, more specifically, the conceptual blending theory of Fauconnier & Turner (1996) can help expand the discussion of footing by using the theory of mental spaces (Fauconnier, 1985, 1997; Fauconnier & Turner, 1998). The data come from the discourse of six signed language interpreters who simultaneously interpret a lecture from English to American Sign Language (ASL). The discourse of the six interpreters supports the notion that interpreters blend a space, Narrator Space, with the author of the message. In addition to this space, interpreters also use a newly identified space, Interpreter Space. Interpreter Space is a mental space where the interpreters demonstrate their processes of their interpretations through a variety of linguistic features such as producing constructed action and dialogue in ASL when it was not present in English. In addition to these spaces being identified in the data, all six interpreters seamlessly negotiated and blended several different mental spaces by using the same types of linguistic features that Deaf signers use (i.e. eye gaze, blinking, head tilting/shifting, and body shifting) (Dudis, 1997, Thumann, 2010). This study proposes the notion of using the conceptual blending process to expand the framework of analyzing and teaching interpreting

Time matters on shallow open sites: An example from Western Sydney, Australia

Considering matters of time is essential for the study of artefact assemblages from shallow open sites on the Cumberland Plain of western Sydney. Matters of time are not optional extras. Open sites can have different histories of artefact accumulation, as indicated by varying proportions of different raw material types with depth of deposit. These raw material changes are consistent with demonstrated regional changes and provide very rough chronologies for the phases during which artefacts accumulated. As it is not often possible to use stratigraphy to distinguish between older and younger artefacts on these sites, the artefact assemblages are treated in this thesis as time-averaged palimpsests. This research has demonstrated that the nature of silcrete assemblages tend to differ depending on the temporal phases of artefact accumulation. Assemblages which have accumulated during one phase (the Bondaian or Phase 2) demonstrate trends with increasing distance from quarries (distance-decay); more so than assemblages which accumulated during multiple temporal phases. Change in silcrete procurement and reduction strategies during the earliest phase (Pre-Bondaian or Phase 1) and during the most recent phase (Late Bondaian or Phase 2B) are affected by the nature of time-averaged assemblages, disrupting distance-decay trends. Further, assemblages from high density knapping concentrations – single episodes of knapping activity – are highly varied, even within single sites. The approach and methods adopted in this research are likely to be applicable to many other regions where otherwise undated stone artefacts in shallow deposits are the predominant type of archaeological evidence

Perceptions of middle school students on gardening

The purpose of this study was to describe the perceptions middle school students had about agriculture and gardening as part of the GrOW (Gardening and Overall Wellness) Program. This included multiple constructs, including students’ gardening efficacy, perceptions of those who had already completed the GrOW Program, perceptions of those who had not completed the GrOW Program, and students’ future interests in gardening. The population for this study was sixth-grade students at the Partnership Middle School in Starkville, Mississippi. A quantitative instrument was used to assess the perceptions of the students (n = 222). Overall, students had positive perceptions about the GrOW Program. They believed it would help them in being able to assist their families in raising a garden. Students understood that watering and weeding were important in keeping a garden healthy, and they liked being outdoors. Several recommendations for future research were revealed through this study. Surveying other middle schools that also have gardening programs with similar and different demographics would provide a complete evaluation of gardening perceptions. For future studies on this program, having sixth-grade students complete the survey at the beginning and end of the school year would provide a more detailed view of what the students perceptions of the GrOW Program were for that school year. Finally, since students’ views tend to change over time, a longitudinal study to better explain student perceptions of agriculture and gardening. The GrOW program has potential in serving as a model and providing resources for other schools wanting to develop a curriculum-based gardening program

On the discrete spectrum of quantum layers

Consider a quantum particle trapped between a curved layer of constant width built over a complete, non-compact, $\mathcal C^2$ smooth surface embedded in $\mathbb{R}^3$. We assume that the surface is asymptotically flat in the sense that the second fundamental form vanishes at infinity, and that the surface is not totally geodesic. This geometric setting is known as a quantum layer. We consider the quantum particle to be governed by the Dirichlet Laplacian as Hamiltonian. Our work concerns the existence of bound states with energy beneath the essential spectrum, which implies the existence of discrete spectrum. We first prove that if the Gauss curvature is integrable, and the surface is weakly $\kappa$-parabolic, then the discrete spectrum is non-empty. This result implies that if the total Gauss curvature is non-positive, then the discrete spectrum is non-empty. We next prove that if the Gauss curvature is non-negative, then the discrete spectrum is non-empty. Finally, we prove that if the surface is parabolic, then the discrete spectrum is non-empty if the layer is sufficiently thin.Comment: Clarifications and corrections to previous version, conjecture from previous version is proven here (Theorem 1.5), additional references include