Does smoke derived from Victorian native vegetation stimulate germination of dormant soil-stored seed?

The effectiveness of Victorian (local) plant-derived smoke in stimulating germination of soil-stored seeds was compared with that of commercial sources from Western Australia and South Africa, for soil samples from a Eucalyptus baxteri (Bentham) Maiden and Blakely ex. J. Black heathy-woodland in the Grampians National Park, western Victoria, using a glasshouse experiment. Smoke from all three sources enhanced seedling emergence relative to no treatment (control). Seedling densities for the Victorian and Western Australian smoke treatments were not significantly different, but were higher than those for the South African smoke. There were also significant differences in species richness and composition among smoke treatments. Mean richness was highest in the Western Australian and lowest in the South African smoke treatments. Differences in species composition were again greatest between samples treated with Victorian or Western Australian smoke and those treated with South African smoke. Smoke clearly acts as a trigger for germination in some species. However, comparisons here were complicated by different methods of smoke production. Further research is required to identify the chemical constituents of smoke which influence seed germination, and the optimum concentration(s) of smoke in relation to germination

Forgiveness in Psychology and Law: The Meeting of Moral Development and Restorative Justice

This article discusses the psychological meaning of forgiveness and its relation to the criminal justice system. Includes a discussion of the four phases of the development progression of forgiveness

Teaching to "The Good Ones"? Examining the Relationship Between Inequity and the Practice of and Preparation for Postsecondary Mathematics Instruction.

This dissertation focused on inequity in calculus instruction through a two-part study that built on the findings from an earlier exploratory study. The exploratory study, conducted in the same department, revealed connections between personal theories of mathematics intelligence that doctoral student instructors (DSIs) held for themselves and those that they held for their students. The first component of the dissertation project was a design intervention study that examined a practice-based approach to preparing DSIs to give students equitable feedback, a core instructional practice, in their postsecondary calculus instruction. The second component was a comparative investigation of teacher/student interactions across identity difference in postsecondary calculus instruction. Four of the instructors from the intervention study were observed and interviewed throughout their first semester of teaching to examine their interactions with their undergraduate students across identity difference. The three articles in this dissertation focus on the findings from this second study. The findings suggested that the DSIs, who were members of overrepresented groups (i.e., majoritized students identifying as men and Asian or White), held some common understandings about what in meant to do mathematics well, which they used as lenses for gauging their own and others’ potential to successfully navigate mathematics as a discipline. Moreover, evidence from this study indicated that when the DSIs viewed students through these lenses that they noticed different characteristics for minoritized and majoritized students, even when they exhibited similar behaviors. These impressions formed the DSIs’ opinions about the potential of their students, which systematically disadvantaged women, especially those identifying as Latina and Black. Finally, the findings suggested that the DSIs acted on their ideas about intelligence through their teaching practices, creating differentiated access to learning opportunities and marginalizing minoritized students. The resulting inequitable approaches to instructional practices may reduce domain identification and motivation, create lower expectations, and depress performance for minoritized students in mathematics classrooms as explored in the pre-calculus case presented in the third article. These findings support the need for the design of equitable approaches to mathematics instructional practices and the explicit preparation of postsecondary instructors to engage in them.PhDIndependent Interdepartmental Degree ProgramUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133413/1/estherae_1.pd

Advancing a Democratic Pedagogy and Supervision Framework: An Illustrative Case of Teacher Questioning in Secondary Mathematics Instruction

This article pushes back against the evalu-centric view of improvement (Hazi, 2018; 2020) in the supervision literature by advocating for a democratic pedagogy and supervision framework developed to support instructional supervision and evaluation dialogue between teachers and leaders. This democratized approach honors and centers the teacher’s expertise and learning as well as the leader’s in the observation, debrief, and reflection process. Through this decentering of expertise in the instructional supervision cycle, our goal is to build leaders’ and teachers’ mutual capacity to develop, implement, and sustain democratic instructional supervision cultures in classrooms and schools. Additionally, we illustrate our framework through a subject/discipline-specific case of instructional supervision in secondary mathematics instruction. Through this illustrative case, we demonstrate how the framework provides school leaders and teachers with specific, shared pedagogical language to engage in standards-based mathematical dialogue during the instructional supervision process. Finally, we discuss the implications of our questioning framework for democratic school leadership, supervisors’ leadership content knowledge, teachers’ discipline-specific work of teaching, and instructional supervision practices, which are often stifled by accountability-driven teacher evaluation education policies that suppress schools’ leadership capacity to apply democratic instructional supervision standards and principles

Messy methods: Making sense of participatory research with young people in PE and sport

Participatory research with young people has become an approach increasingly adopted by researchers within PE and sport. In this paper, we draw on our research diaries to collectively reflect on our experiences of attempting to work in participatory ways. Although we each work with different young people and have adopted differing participatory approaches, there are similarities in our research experiences. This includes recurring accounts of ‘muddling through’ and messiness occupying our reflections. We are also struck by the absence of concern within the literature to reveal the messiness of research. In light of our shared musings about participatory research with different young people, this paper offers some preliminary thoughts about our experiences of dealing with this messiness. We take as our focus the increasing concerns to support rights-based research that advocates inclusion, participation and empowerment, and draw on our research to explore how these features were worked towards. In these discussions we are open about the limitations of the research, challenges encountered and the resultant messiness arising. Our conclusion turns to what it might mean if researchers were more transparent about the usually unpredictable, messy and confusing situations that arise in the practice of doing participatory research with young people

It’s a Balancing Act: A Self-Study of Teacher Educators’ Feedback Practices and the Underlying Tensions

While there are documented benefits of full-time faculty participating in clinical supervision, challenges, such as conflicting time demands, personal bias, adherence to common evaluation forms, and power differentials, can create impediments to effective practicum supervision (Ciuffetelli Parker & Volante, 2009). We, as teacher educators, turned to reflection through self-study to investigate our professional practice with the aim of better understanding and overcoming those challenges. Like Bullock (2017), we utilized teacher candidates’ perspectives to disrupt, confirm, and extend our narratives. We focused on the practice of giving teacher candidates feedback on their developing teaching during their clinical placement in elementary schools. Feedback is central to our work as liaisons (i.e., university-based supervisors) with teacher candidates in the field and critical to their learning and improvement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Through this self-study, we sought to answer the following research question: What underlying tensions constrain our feedback, as liaisons, to our teacher candidates in clinical placements? How can we better negotiate those tensions to make this work sustainable for full-time faculty

Developing an Angled Perspective as Teacher Educators: Using Narrative Reflection to Disrupt the Funding of Identity in Teacher Education

Building capacity in teachers to teach students skillfully and respectfully across the diversity gap is complex work that requires teachers to learn to see with what we term as angled perspective. If an angled perspective is learnable, then it is teachable. Using our narratives as religiously and ethnically diverse women teacher educators, we share through our own learning and growth, how this type of analysis can contribute to coalitional building for teacher education, and thus K-12 teachers. Through our conceptualization of identity theory, positionality, and intersectionality, we argue angled perspectives contribute to solidarity work in education. We share implications for teacher educators to integrate angled perspectives into curricula across teacher preparation courses